The MCR Reunion and the Ultimate G-Note

California 2019.

One simple little statement, originally posted way back in 2010 and again last Thursday, has changed the state of the scene forever. See, the crazy thing is: My Chemical Romance is back.

I truly never believed I would live to see this reunion. My hope came and went with every false alarm. By 2016 and the tenth anniversary re-release of The Black Parade, I was defeated and resigned. MCR was done; they'd told us a thousand times. It was long past time I believed them.

Today, though, I take it all back.

I am 20,000 feet in the air, ironically enough, heading straight for California. The plan was to skip blogging this week. MCR has a funny way of derailing things pretty quickly, so here we are. By the time I post this, there may be new information available, God, do I hope there's more, but here's a quick recap of everything we know so far about the MCR reunion, and more importantly, why it matters.

California 2019. Round one.

In November of 2010, My Chemical Romance releases their fourth studio album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. It is a killer record (just check out my album review for more evidence), however, it wasn't as commercially successful as the previous release. Then again, I don't think anything could have been. Consumption of music changed so drastically within those few years and The Black Parade is an enigma.

Anyways, after the scrapping of Conventional Weapons, Danger Days was a high concept record that the band was extremely proud of. The concept, you ask? California 2019. More specifically, characters fighting against "the man" in a Californian desert, apocalyptic wasteland. Whether you've listened to Danger Days or not, here's what you need to know: This is the first explicit mention of California 2019 and it is visually presented to us in the "Na Na Na" music video.

Following the complete album cycle for Danger Days, the band starts dropping hints to MCR5, their next studio record. Rumors circulated that it was dark, darker than anything they'd done before, and it may or may not have been conceptualized around a fictional support group for parents whose children had died. Yeah, like I said, dark.

In the meantime, the band started releasing material from the scrapped Conventional Weapons, two tracks at a time, in order to fill the space between album cycles. Things were looking promising for MCR fans, until...

March 22, 2013.

The band breaks up. A blog post, almost as dramatic as some of mine, is published, claiming the band is done, there are no hard feelings, but otherwise, there's no explanation. The world is in mourning. The next day, front man Gerard Way publishes his own blog post about the end of the band. The world cries even harder. They release one final song: "Fake Your Death." The world holds its breath.

And that's it. Life goes on.

The guys make music on their own. Rhythm guitarist Frank Iero goes on to do multiple solo music projects, as well as lead guitarist Ray Toro and bassist Mikey Way. Gerard releases one solo album, a few songs here and there, but mostly returns to writing comics. His creation, one traced back to the earliest days of My Chem, The Umbrella Academy, becomes a Netflix show in early 2019. They move on, getting noticeably happier and healthier, but the world doesn't.

Perhaps this is the most remarkable part of the MCR story: support for it never wavered, even when it was as good as dead. Gerard said it himself, "[MCR] can never die...Because it is not a band. It is an idea." Fans took that statement and ran with it. "Welcome to the Black Parade," "Teenagers," "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)," etcetera, etcetera are classics of a scene that's long been on the verge of extinction. They are representative of scene nostalgia, of a time when rock music and telling stories was cool. Maybe that's why they still regularly get radio play. Maybe it's because MCR is just that good.

Needless to say, with such dedication to a band formerly pronounced dead, there was always bound to be insane reunion rumors. Namely, there's the Smashing Pumpkin theory, which predicted MCR would follow a career path identical to the Smashing Pumpkins: be a band for twelve years, break up for six, and then reunite in, you guessed it, 2019. It seemed too good to be true, too perfect, even for a band notorious for planning things down to the smallest detail. Add in the fact their last release was literally titled "Fake Your Death," and some people went into 2019, the year of the Killjoys, utterly convinced it would end with a MCR reunion.

Personally, I wanted to believe it. I still want to. It feels like fate, like it was meant to be this way. We don't know yet if this is coincidental or if fans were right all along, but this brings us to...

California 2019. Round Two.

October 30th, just one day after my twenty-first birthday I must add, Iero posted a photo to Instagram with a caption talking about the rainy forecast for Halloween. He alluded to having to do something else in place of the holiday. I won't lie, the thought crossed my mind, could this be IT?, but it went just as quickly. I wasn't ready to get my hopes up again.

October 31st, Iero's birthday, My Chemical Romance makes an Instagram account. There's merch released (and quickly taken down) with one word printed across the front: RETURN. Suddenly, all of the band's social media accounts change their profile photos to a symbol no one has ever seen. Every ten minutes, the Instagram puts a new symbol on their story.

It all just happened so fast.

The final photo on the story was each of the symbols surrounding the initials, MCR, spelling out MCR5. I refuse to believe this was accidental, despite there currently being no confirmation of new music.

Within a half hour, the band members were posting photos of a black and white statue, something oddly reminiscent of the Catholic imagery used in Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, with the caption, "California 2019."

It sounds like I'm making this up. I know.

One reunion show in Los Angeles on December 20th was announced soon after. Tickets went on sale the following day, November 1st. They sold out in under four minutes.

And that's all we've got for now. There's speculation that the boys will head out on tour following the LA show, but nothing is confirmed yet. I won't say they are absolutely making new music, because there hasn't been official word yet, but one thing is certain: MCR is back, baby.

MCR5, whatever it is, doesn't mean the same thing it did back before the breakup. Now, it stands for hope, for a future, one that My Chemical Romance has quickly promised they will have.

I can't say what will happen over the coming weeks. I don't know what the future holds. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the masterful way one of the greatest bands of the 2000's self-destructed and then managed to raise itself from the dead.

My Chemical Romance is proof that even the craziest dreams come true. The impossible is possible, but most importantly, there's reason to keep going. Even if it's something as trivial as the possibility of your favorite band getting back together, it's a reason to stick around. It's reason enough to keep on living.

All that being said, if MCR so much as steps foot on the east coast (Jersey, perhaps?) you can catch me there. Let me know what you think of all the news and if anyone wants to send me updates while I'm out west, I wouldn't say no! Thanks for reading, and we'll be back to regular programming in a couple weeks! // bcp