Recommended
It's been three years since my original review of this album came out, and while I do stand by the some of the points I made in the original review, I don't think the original review was very well articulated and sort of went off the rails in its last few paragraphs. Granted, it was my first year of writing reviews for music period at the time that it was written, so I guess I should cut myself a bit of slack. Regardless, I wanted to re-review this album with a bit more review writing experience under my belt to better reflect my thoughts on one of my favorite albums. Enjoy.
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is the second album by American rock band My Chemical Romance. It follows their more raw, roughly produced debut I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love and is also their major label debut.
My Chemical Romance reprises the aggressive, fast-paced, and emotional nature of their debut but takes a more polished approach to it on this album, with better mixing, a more refined sound, and a more cohesive feel in general.
It opens strongly with the highly memorable, tone-setting "Helena", a tribute to vocalist Gerard Way and bassist Mikey Way's late grandmother. It starts with Gerard softly singing the opening lines, backed by a minimalistic instrumental before the band explodes into action with energetic drumming and guitars that get completely stuck in your head. It's probably one of my favorite openers to any album period.
"Give 'Em Hell Kid" leans a little into traditional punk territory, making use of a distortion effect on Gerard's vocals and having guitars with more raw tonalities thrown into the mix. The song's got a sassy energy to it ("We are young and we don't care!"), feeling a lot like a theme song.
"I'm Not Okay (I Promise)", although the "weakest" track on the album, is still a fun and catchy track. Though some may find the lyrics to be whiny (especially since the chorus is ("I'm not okay, I'm not okay....) I find they work because the song feels more satirical than sincere, lightly poking fun at the trend in the emo genre to write about just how distraught you feel. Its chorus is perfectly anthemic, too, and it's really no wonder this has become one of their top songs even if other songs on the album are better.
"The Ghost of You" is one of several tracks on the album where the song's lyrics are supported by its structure. Here, its longing, desperate lyrics about wanting to see someone again but knowing that you probably won't be able to are driven forward by the fact that the song starts slow, but builds and builds until the song bursts as the narrator grasps and perhaps accepts this reality.
"Hang 'Em High" pays homage to western movies, even having some whistling to start off the track that very quickly becomes a wall of screams, an opener that instantly sets the tone for the fastest, most non-stop song on the whole record. It ends similarly to how it started, layered screams bookending the entire thing.
The album culminates with "I Never Told You What I Do for a Living", which features the oddly catchy chorus of:
"Another knife in my hands a stain that never comes off the sheets / Clean me off, I'm so dirty babe / It ain't the money and it sure as hell ain't just for the fame / It's for the bodies I claim and those"
And my favorite vocal moment on the album, where Gerard screams out "I tried, I tried!" with incredible intensity at song's intense breakdown. This is pretty clearly the climax of the record for me, everything that came before this being a lead-up to this. It's very satisfiying when you listen to this track on its own, but in the context of the whole thing it's even better.
My favorite tracks from the album are hard to narrow down for sure but "It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Deathwish", "Thank You for the Venom", and "You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison" are great stand out tracks from the album.
Overall, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge marked the point in My Chemical Romance's catalogue where their sound became more polished and refined, no longer restrained by limited production budget (like on Bullets) and allowed to reach its full potential. It's no wonder then that the album has become and will remain one of the most loved albums of the 2000s in the alternative music space and beyond.