by Andrew Auclair ’29 on November 13, 2025
A&E - Music
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge was the second studio album produced by the American rock band My Chemical Romance. Upon its release, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge achieved both critical and commercial success and was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America within a year of its release. Within this album are an impressive variety of songs, from the witty and aggressive tunes “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and “Thank You for the Venom,” to the haunting tones of the song “Ghost of You.” Personally, my introduction to MCR was through their other highly acclaimed studio album, The Black Parade. There is not much to be said about The Black Parade that hasn’t been said already; it’s a masterclass in terms of heavy concept rock albums. However, I feel that Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is nowadays often overshadowed by the continuous popularity of The Black Parade, to the point that people are seriously missing out on a lot of great songs from Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.
The album begins with the song “Helena,” an eerie and sad song attributed to lead singer Gerard Way and bassist Mikey Way’s late grandmother. This song is, believe it or not, one of MCR’s only actually “emo” songs, as the band tends not to appreciate fan-association with the “emo” genre. The lyrics deal with the loss of someone close to the band, and it creates a catchy, but tragic piece. My personal favorite song on the album, “Thank You for the Venom,” opens up with the nastiest electric guitar lick you have ever heard in your life, with the backing guitar reeling it all in for the vocals. It’s near impossible to listen to this song without wanting to headbang, with Ray Toro shredding the ever-loving life out of his guitar and Gerard Way’s chilling lyrical expertise. More notable songs include the vaguely Western vibes in “Hang ‘em High,” the upbeat “The Jetset Life is Gonna Kill You” with its beautiful segue out of “The Ghost of You,” and, of course, the powerful closing song “I Never Told You What I Do For a Living.” The production value on these songs is just incredible, and MCR as a whole doesn’t have a single song I find unlistenable, like many of my other favorite artists.
As a concept album, the band attempts to have consistent themes throughout the album, while also telling some form of story. According to Gerard Way, the story of the album was intended to follow a man and a woman, who are separated by death after a gunfight, going to Hell, only to find out that the woman is still alive. The man speaks to the Devil, who tells the man that he can be with her again unless the man brings him the souls of a thousand evil men. The man agrees to do it, and the Devil hands him a gun. However, in the final draft of the album, the record ended up being much more about loss and real life than anything, without trying to tell much of a specific story. The album that they released after this one stuck to a much more rigid storytelling flow, that being the incredible tragedy of The Black Parade. I think that this Album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenage, actually does a great job with keeping its themes consistent, with most of the songs being about some form of death or social pressure, two high-interest points for a lot of teens especially at the dawn of the 21st century.
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge impressively weaves early-2000s teenage angst with the sound of post-hardcore rock, creating a unique sound that, admittedly, isn’t for everyone. Many people whom I’ve tried to introduce to My Chemical Romance pass it off as cheesy, emo, and not real rock. To be fair, if I could critique MCR on one thing, it would be the somewhat juvenile tones their songs naturally produce with the heavy emphasis on deep adolescent frustration. It’s not necessarily a problem with me that sometimes their sound gives comical levels of “ugh, I hate my life” vibes, and it is absolutely not a sound that was meant to be appealing to everyone. Other than that, in my eyes, My Chemical Romance and their album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, prove that rock will never die. MCR recently released a deluxe version of this album back in June, and it refurbishes all of their old songs, implementing higher-quality audio and changing some small technical details. I think that Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, given more time, will go down along with The Black Parade as a cornerstone in the history of not just rock, but music as a whole.