My Chemical Romance

At the PNE Forum on Saturday, December 10

Judging by the screams that greeted My Chemical Romance at the PNE Forum on Saturday, 2005 has turned the New Jersey five-piece into teen icons. With its mix of gothic punk and enraged pop, the breakthrough album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge has lifted the band from opening club dates for Face to Face to selling out its own Forum performance.

Expectations were high as the group sound-checked behind a giant black curtain to the delight of 4,000 shrill voices. The house lights then shut off as the Smiths' "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" blasted through the speakers in a knowing nod to the fans' hormonally charged impatience.

The curtain then dropped as the band kicked into "Thank You for the Venom". Gerard Way pranced around the stage shaking his hips and wagging his finger at his devotees, asking them to scream as he wailed the song's refrain, "Give me all your hopeless hearts". In a marked contrast to his last appearance here, at the Forum earlier this year for the Taste of Chaos festival, the singer was practically a southern gentleman. Instead of challenging audience members to fight, he urged everyone to take four steps back, giving those near the front of the stage some breathing room. "If you see someone fall down, pick them up," he pleaded. "Are you with us or against us?"

The rest of the outfit jumped around the stage ferociously for the better part of its hour-long show. Guitarist Frank Iero barked out his backup vocals to the furious up-tempo cut "Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough For the Two Of Us", repeatedly knocking his mike stand to the ground each time a roadie set it back up. Frizzy-haired axeman Ray Toro pogoed about as he alternated between buzz-saw power chords and classic-rock solos. Through all this mayhem, Way was by far MCR's most visually alluring member, decked out as he was in a baffling ensemble of a heavy bulletproof vest and pleather-crotched pants. The vocalist's between-song antics-first he quoted some old Public Enemy lyrics, then belted out a campy a cappella version of the Carpenters' "Superstar"-were equally confusing.

Despite politely telling Vancouverites how awesome they were, the screamo crooner still managed to muster up a bit of punk-rock defiance as he stuck the microphone into his mouth and threw his middle fingers in the air throughout the night.

While "The Ghost of You" may have been My Chemical Romance's mellowest tune of the set, the emo ballad inspired one energized fan to attempt a stage dive before being tackled by a beefy security guard. Unfazed, the band continued to play the antiwar song against a grainy video backdrop of falling bombs.

As the group hit the final note of the ultra-poppy "I'm Not OK (I Promise)", red and silver confetti rained from the ceiling. The lights went up and thousands of excited, mop-topped kids, decked out in their fresh MCR T-shirts, were escorted home by their parents before the last shimmering piece of paper hit the ground.

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