If success is the sweetest revenge of all, My Chemical Romance are getting the last laugh.
Their major label debut, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, has just been certified platinum in Canada with sales of 100,000 -- and it's sold more than a million copies in the U.S.
"Sweet revenge is being vindicated and proving people wrong," says guitarist Frank Iero. "We've had a bunch of experiences in our lives with people going, 'This will never work, you'll never do it,' so our revenge is the music we create."
Not that they're bitter or anything. The New Jersey quintet have exorcised any demons they might have had. In fact, Iero sounds downright cheery when talking about their melodic take on punk and goth.
"We like to be extremely ironic with some things. We take a song about life in peril or suicide and put a poppy melody to it and make it uplifting."
How do you make death sound fun? Well, the band finds comics are a good inspiration.
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge started out as a concept album based on a story in the Garth Ennis and Steve Dillion Preacher series -- the tale of a man who makes a deal with the devil to be reunited with his dead lover in exchange for 1,000 corpses. Eventually, the finished product also included several songs based on true stories.
"Certain things kept happening to us that we wanted to include, so we strayed from the concept. Now it's a mix between the fake story at hand and the experiences we had," Iero says.
The real-life tales are about love and (yep) death, two themes explored on their 2002 debut, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love -- which they recorded a month after forming.
The Eyeball Records release, coupled with their incendiary live shows, soon attracted the major labels. A bidding war ensued and when the smoke cleared the band were signed to Reprise, a Warner subsidiary.
"We found a label that got us. They were like, 'We want you to be My Chemical Romance and write a record.' We were surprised, so we wanted to make the jump and see how many people we can reach."
Now they know -- and it's more than even they expected. Their impressive sales stats were helped by major stints this year opening for Green Day during their sold-out North American tour (which stopped at MTS Centre) and headlining the Vans Warped Tour. They recently wrapped up their own American arena tour and are spending December touring Canada with Thrice and Circa Survive. The triple-bill hits the Winnipeg Convention Centre Monday night.
And just in time for Christmas, SEG Toys is releasing action figures of the band. The dolls come clad in red suits, with red handguns and coffins for accessories.
"It just kind of makes sense for us, because we collect so many toys anyway, and the ultimate collection is to have your own figure," Iero told MTV.com. "I think that was the goal of starting this band in the first place."
Revenge or not, that's pretty sweet.
MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
Mon., 7 p.m. @ Convention Centre. With Thrice & Circa Survive.
