My Chemical Romance (The O2, Dublin)
Review by James Hendicott
Photos by Kieran Frost
2007, Seoul, South Korea: Live western rock is a niche genre in this part of East Asia, but that gives it a certain free-reign: a lack of expectation that means it’s often performed in its purist form. Crowds exhibit curiosity rather than expectation and without media pressure or excessive fandom, performances are often as uninfluenced by external factors as we can ever hope to see. My Chemical Romance clearly see this as an opportunity: their Olympic Auditorium performance is wrought and rough around the edges, pumped full of a level of adrenaline that has the stage show almost ludicrously frantic. The hits – and they were lesser hits back then – are conspicuous by their absence, and the band are determined to enjoy themselves in an unrestricted, unpredictable manner. The result is stark, raw and at times almost violently intense; the quality of the show becomes a national talking point.
2011, O2, Dublin: The version of My Chemical Romance that strolls onto the huge O2 stage is a much-changed and far more hyped animal. The commercial success of the two intervening albums has established a young, hormone-driven fan base and pushed the commercial aspects of the bands music to an unavoidably high level. These days, My Chemical Romance are very much the business machine: a brand as well as a band, and a highly profitable one at that. Having taken the concept album to its logical extreme in latest offering ‘Danger Days’ – a million seller that depicts the bands alter-egos as corruption fighting heroes of the not so distant future – today’s show is a the perfect marker for MCR’s commercial progress.
Like many bands who take a turn for the mainstream, the signs are not all that positive. Perhaps it’s where we’re sat, but ‘Danger Days’ tracks don’t come over well live. Of course, that goes all-but unnoticed among the assembled gathering of hero-worshipping teenagers, but most of the new efforts are fast and trashy, and tonight the lyrics are layered a touch too deeply in the sound to really come through. Sure, we’re getting every word from the wildly bouncing teens down the front – one particular blonde who features regularly on the big screen looks like she’s actually arrived in heaven – but the overall feel leaves us grabbing at the lyrics and tussling with all but the starkest of lines.
While most bands offer up a fan-friendly mix of their past material on such a tour, MCR have directed things perhaps a touch too much towards the newer efforts. While tracks like ‘DESTROYA’ and ‘Planetary (Go)’ are solid rock songs, seven of the opening ten tracks are taken from ‘Danger Days’ and all of them suffer from the same less-than-precise sound problems.
It takes the older, slower numbers for the set to reach any kind of crescendo. Gerard – who these days is very much the face of the band as a live prospect – brings his emo-strutting and crowd-pumping to the fore during an emphatic performance of ‘I’m Not Okay’, the first let-loose effort that comes even close to that Seoul performance all those years ago. ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’ and the even darker ‘Helena’ are also on course, yet with more than half a set passed by at less than the band’s peak, it’s largely a case of too little, too late. Even the encore – which consists of album track ‘Cancer’ and debut single ‘Vampires Will Never Hurt You’ is somewhat wide of the mark, bypassing the obvious mammoth finale of ‘I Don’t Love You’ at a time when a big single was really needed.
We need to be fair, though: it’s not that tonight’s show is bad, it’s just we expected so much more. When an arena show is drawing fans from the entire breadth of the country, you hope for a stage show that consists of more than just a few ‘deep’ quotes (especially when the one on ‘taking your medicine’ sounds like a borderline drug reference) and a performance that comes over as a touch more than an album promo, even if that is the primary aim of this particular tour loop. MCR’s phenomenally passionate fan base absolutely lapped the whole thing up, of course, but to the casual observer – having once seen My Chemical Romance perform at their absolute, flamboyant peak – Gerard’s dominant role and the sedate vibe of today’s show (especially next to support act The Blackout) and leaves a slightly hollow feel. For all the hype, this particular stadium show is nothing more than average.
