Shuddersome Soundscape #8: A Fate More Terrifying...

 "Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!" As the grand day of festivities draws closer, we add another beast to our list of things that go bump in the night. This week, I bring you a vampiric tale from a highlight in emo history. This is "Vampires Will Never Hurt You" by My Chemical Romance.


Years before The Black Parade turned the band into international stars, MCR released their debut album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love in 2002, only three months after they formed. This album, which planted seeds for their future works, presented songs that still carried the raw, frantic energy from the emo genre's hardcore roots. This, together with Gerard Way's distinct, wailing and occasionally screaming vocals and the songs' heart-filled lyrics, helped MCR carve out their own unique place in the 2000s emo world, back when the subculture still largely existed as an underground community.

Compared to the international success the later albums received, I Brought You My Bullets... didn't chart in the US and remains elusive even today. Despite this, the album became increasingly popular in the underground scene. 

The lyrics of "Vampires Will Never Hurt You" tell an intense supernatural story on the surface: the narrator faces attacks by vicious vampires, and, after he is bitten, he begs his lover to drive a steak through his heart and rescue him from his monstrous fate. In this plea, he also promises his lover that he will protect her from the looming threat lest she also meet her doom. The song takes its theme from a vampire-centric comic Way had created; before MCR, he used to intern as a comic book writer. His ideas - never completed in its original illustrated form, came to fruition in this new musical medium. 

Besides this high-stakes tale, the song also carries a powerful underlying meaning. Rather than just bloodthirsty beasts, the vampires are also a metaphor for our society given to heartless greed. The narrator fears being dragged into their ranks, as he values his own individuality, mind, and beliefs. He pleads for his lover to save him should he be swept away into cruel conformity, a fate that , for the narrator, Way, and counterculturists alike, is just as frightening as the literal titular creatures. 


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