The Album
Today I am going to geek out about one of my favourite albums of all time. Danger Days by My Chemical Romance is a neon punk dystopian anti authoritarian rebellious rock and roll meets punk masterpiece of a concept album. It is so much so a concept album, that it takes its entire concept into the real universe and lets its audience engage with the fiction through an alternate reality game.
We know that the advent of streaming in music has shifted the mainstream attention from entire albums as a wholistic element to individual songs as atomic streamable elements. Albums have become less important and more focus has moved onto singles. Danger days released in 2011. At that point, the shift had started already. Digital music stores became dominant, with iTunes spearheading that industry, and the first music streaming services were gaining in popularity. CDs were still present though. We were pretty much at the turning point. And as artists started leaning into the single as their medium of choice, this album stood strong as one of the last stands for albums as a medium.
There are a few things that albums can do, that singles can't.
Albums are the main guideline for the eras of artists. The entire aesthetic of an artist can reflect the current album. Promotional material, stage design and decorative elements, the social media presence. The album can serve as a guideline for it all. If Florence + The Machine make an album that includes nature as an elemental core of an album, the microphone on the stage will be wrapped in plants and leaves. If Muse make an album with many electronic influences, the stage is adorned with all sorts of lighting equipment and becomes reminiscent of an EDM artists stage.
Albums can enhance individual songs with filler tracks that create cohesion and coherence. An album has tools to make songs flow together through the means of atmospheric enhancements. Another one of my favourite albums, Linkin Park's "A Thousand Suns" makes excellent use of filler tracks to maximize the emotional impact of the songs and the album as a whole. Filler tracks can also contain references to the songs, like themes in a classical composition or a movie soundtrack. Albums have tools for storytelling via audio, that singles lack most of the time.
The combination of the individual songs from an album can create an overarching story. Such stories are typically called "concept albums". A well known example of this is Pink Floyd's "The Wall" or The Who's "Tommy". Twenty One Pilots' Clancy/Blurryface saga spans multiple (5) albums and therefore is a whole concept-saga of concept albums. You can think of them as musicals but without a theater stage, just the music and the accompanying materials.
Albums are powerful! Albums are an art form worth protecting and keeping sacred as a tradition! It is a wonderful feeling to get lost in an album, to listen to it front to back.
The Universe
Danger days utilised every tooth and nail at its disposal to enhance its fictional universe. The promotional material included a whole alternate reality game that teased the album as it was upcoming, and provided a first look into its fascist postapocalyptic world. The website turned into a funky shabby radio and video signal receiver that allowed users to view distorted messages that showcase the environment. On YouTube, video clips of the fictional villain corporation that hold the reins in the universe are uploaded; advertisments for their fictional products, brainwashing simulations that they employ to keep the population under control, seemingly whimsical propaganda cartoons that the company would produce. The posters advertising the actual album displayed the band in the costumes of their in-universe alter egos. The album itself starts with a radio transmission of the rebellious counter culture protagonists. The universe is vast and My Chemical Romance made it as big as a concept album can be.
So let's get into the universe: The story takes place in post apocalyptic California, where civilization has been eradicated save for one big city at the center of it all, surrounded by a big desert. The storys antagonists, the evil mind controlling company Better Living Industries (or BL/Ind for short - how tongue in cheek!) control the last bastion of civilization: Battery City. They employ a brutalist minimalist look and feel to their brand and cover the entire city and lifestyle in this aesthetic. It is clearly meant to mirror typical corporate aesthetics and put them to their extremes.
Despite literally putting a friendly face on, as a logo, the corporate environment feels imposing, grotesque, and depressing.
Among the products that the company makes is a pill that supposedly makes all of your problems go away. Every product, even those that are supposed to bring joy, are packaged in minimalist white wrapping with monochrome typography on it. The company brings you the brain chemicals you need to feel happiness, but the whole process is devoid of the magic that gives it any meaning.
BL/Ind have a branch of enforcers, called S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W. Their task is to keep dissidents under control and, if necessary, eliminate them. Their outfits are monochrome and resembling sterile bright vampire outfits. Even their guns are all white. You can draw comparisons to the men in grey from Michael Ende's "Momo". In general, the whole story can be very much likened to Momo, just embracing the punk image a bit more and being slightly more violent.
On the other side, we have our protagonists: the Fabulous Killjoys, living hidden in the desert. Clad in colorful leather jackets and neon masks, they are the rebels, meaning to free society from its capitalist chains. In every shot we see of the Killjoys, they are either seen directly fighting SCARECROW or just plain having fun. Which directly reflects reality! Having fun is a means of revolution. In a world that wants to kick you while you are down, it is incredibly punk rock to just dance. We will do well to apply this lesson to real life!
There are several characters among the Killjoys, including the characters that the band themselves play, but also the coordinator of the rebels, a vibrant punk radio DJ, and a small kid growing up with the Killjoys, who is forced to grow up in this world of revolution and oppression. This kid is forced to pick sides and be a hero despite their young age.
There also was a comic book series, written by MCR's frontman Gerard Way, that acts as a sequel to the main album and follows teens living in that desert life.
The Music
The music mostly takes the side of the Killjoys - after all MCR is a rock band first and foremost, so it makes sense that most songs tell the side of the rebel punk rockers.
Prior to this album, MCR have mostly made dark and brooding emo music. "I'm Not Okay" and "Welcome To The Black Parade" among many other of their songs are proper emo anthems. "The Black Parade", the album prior to Danger Days, was a massively successful concept album in its own right. So MCR have established themselves as an emo band. And then this album breaks that formula with respectful grace, retaining a core punk element, but imbuing it with as much joy and whimsy as possible, crafting a wonderful pop-punk/dance-punk/rock-and-roll sound. The dance punk manifests in ecstatic rave bangers like Planetary (GO!), and the rock n roll shines in the saturated anthems like Vampire Money. Only rarely do we get to softer sounds on this album. Summer Time, S.I.N.G., and The Kids From Yesterday are the softer side of the album but even still they pack a massive amount of energy. There are a few atmospheric filler tracks, which are radio show excerpts from the aforementioned DJ. These filler tracks do an excellent job creating a coherent experience and giving you short breaks from all the extreme levels of energy.
The Aesthetic
The overall aesthetic of this album is a heavy contrast between the monochrome minimalism of BL/Ind and the neon punk of the Killjoys.
In live concerts, the stage was entirely decorated in the colorful punky aesthetics. The band appeared in their respective roles' costumes. The Killjoys logo was draped behind the stage. The point is: if you are at the show, you are part of the rebellion, you are part of the punk rock, you are part of the community.
The Community
And what a community it is! I was a DeviantArt kid back then. For those who do not know it: DeviantArt is an art platform where anyone can share their art and comment on each ithers creations. Sure, many professional artists used DeviantArt, but plenty of kids and teens used it as a whimsical social platform. Think of it as a spiritual predecessor to Tumblr.
Back in those days, Danger Days played a surprisingly big role on DeviantArt. The whole alternate reality game situation kind of left the door wide open for us nerds to engage with the universe ourselves. Much like people later did with Homestuck, Supernatural, My Hero Academia, or The Amazing Digital Circus, people created their own Killjoy-sonas and wrote their own stories. They roleplayed with each other as Killjoys. Here are some creations on DeviantArt:
Killjoys Never Die by MysticSparkleWings
I also wanna show you a cosplayer who plays a Danger Days themed Hatsune Miku! Her name is constantkilljoy and she does a spectacular job!
To sum it all up, this album brought many of us a lot of joy through the means of immersion and collaboration! For the emo nerds among us, this album was an integral part of growing up. I hope you listen to it! It is wonderful musically and conceptually and it is a monument to revolution!
See ya next time!