My Chemical Romance’s 2013 announcement that they would be dissolving the band shook the emo community to its core. One of the pillars of the scene was leaving, and the announcement came just months after Fall Out Boy announced they would be reuniting and releasing a new album.
Quite frankly, the community was in crisis mode for many reasons.
Being that the community attracts, well, emotional people already, many MCR lovers and die-hard emo fans struggled with the news. The loss of the band was felt for years to come.
And then, seemingly out of the blue, they reunited!
I vividly remember getting the news of the reunion – I was 17, sitting at the computer at my dad’s house, just basking in the news. Up until that point, I had always been sad about the fact that I would never get to see MCR perform live.
Granted, I still haven’t seen them live, but still!
So what led the band to break up in the first place, and why did they choose 2019 to reunite?
In 2013, the band members were all in their mid-to-early 30s, and most of them were married with young children. Gerard and Mikey Way have both spoken about their struggles with addiction, which adds another complex layer to the story of the band.
There were rumors about the break-up being caused by fights between the band members, but these rumors were denied by Gerard following his confirmation that the band was over.
While emo as a genre wasn’t going anywhere in 2013, the personal lives of the band members made it the right time for them to start focusing less on the band and more on themselves. Granted, all of the members continued making music during MCR’s pseudo-hiatus, but not on the level that they did in MCR.
Gerard specifically made a large pivot in his career, not only releasing music as a solo artist, but also doing some work writing for movies and TV. He worked on Edge of Spider-Verse where he co-created the character Peni Parker, who later appeared in the hit movie Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse.
While the band members were focusing on themselves for most of the 2013-2019 period when MCR was broken up, the band wasn’t entirely silent either.
In 2014, only a year after the break-up, the band released May Death Never Stop You, a greatest hits album with a previously unreleased track called “Fake Your Death.” Fun fact – this is actually one of my favorite MCR songs!
Later on, in 2016, the whole MCRX thing happened. I remember this like it was yesterday.
I was a 14-year-old deep in the emo trenches, and the cryptic social media posts branded with the MCRX logo coming from the band’s previously abandoned pages sent me (and many other fans) reeling for weeks, trying to figure out the mystery behind the posts.
The most popular theory was that the band would be coming back – what we all not-so-secretly wanted to happen.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case (yet), and instead, we got a re-release of the band’s hit album The Black Parade with previously unreleased demos added in. The new music wasn’t the best part of the MCRX situation.
The best part was (arguably) was when Gerard Way was being interviewed by Billboard about his comic Doom Patrol and he slid in a little comment, saying that he “wouldn’t count (a reunion) out…”
The quote finishes with him saying that the band members are all “doing stuff in their lives now that they’re really enjoying,” but that didn’t stop fans from taking the reunion comment and running with it.
The ailing hearts of a community had a little nugget of hope to latch onto with this comment, and boy did they put their faith in that nugget.
I remember at the time trying to be realistic about the situation, thinking about the fact that most of the band members had children and side projects to be thinking about and doing my best to accept that I simply would never see an MCR reunion.
To my delight, I was wrong.
The reunion was announced on Halloween of 2019, and I think that was around the time I decided that Halloween was my favorite holiday – I didn’t consciously relate these two things, but it’s kinda poetic to think that they could be linked, no?
Of course, COVID hitting in 2020 put a pause on their touring, but after picking back up in 2021, the band toured until the end of 2022. As of the time of this post’s publication, the MCR website does not list any upcoming tour dates.
In 2022 during the touring period, the band also released “Foundations of Decay,” their first truly new song in 8 years (when “Fake Your Death” came out in 2014).
I’m still holding out a little hope that the band will tour again so I can get a chance to see them live and fulfill my younger self’s emo dreams, but I also wouldn’t be shocked if the band decided to officially be done touring.
To be real, the band members are now all in their early-to-mid 40’s, as it’s been an entire decade now since the band broke up. Their children are now school-age and they’ve got other projects that they likely want to return to at some point.
The stars aligned in just the right way for the band to come back in 2019, but with all the stress that COVID has put on the music industry, I feel a little foolish to hold out hopes for another tour.
Then again, MCR has proven me wrong once, so I wouldn’t put it past them to do it again.
To wrap things up, I think the beauty behind the revival of MCR is the fact that their fans never stopped loving them, whether they were active and putting out music or not. Their fanbase has always been incredibly dedicated, and to be a part of that fanbase has been a light in my life when other parts of the scene have been full of nastiness (see my post about punk-rock star syndrome for more of my thoughts on that).
No matter what happens, MCR will always hold a very special place in the hearts of the community, and the impact of their music on the scene will likely not be forgotten for generations to come.
Thanks everyone for reading, and leave a comment down below if you want to continue the conversation!