After an eight year wait, My Chemical Romance is finally back with a new song, “The Foundations of Decay”. It’s a classic MCR blast: a sprawling six-minute epic that melds emo rock to the rafters with clever twists and turns into hardcore and prog.
The arrival of “The Foundation of Decay” comes as My Chemical Romance prepare to finally launch their long-awaited reunion tour. After disbanding in 2013, the group announced their return in fall 2019 and played only one show that December, but the first wave of Covid-19 forced them to put your tour plans on hold. The dates were initially rescheduled for 2021 but pushed again due to current Covid concerns. The band is now set to launch a UK and European tour this month, with a North American leg starting on August 1. 20 in Oklahoma City.
Despite all the tour plans, My Chemical Romance had not expressly said whether or not they would release new music (a ostensibly new instrumental track appeared in a January article. 2020 teaser for the initial reunion shows). Still, frontman Gerard Way revealed in a interview last year that he has been working on songs, although he did not specify if they were for MCR, a solo project or something else entirely.
“[W]What has been working lately is sitting with [engineer] Doug [McKean], working on the music, and then I’ll go to my office, which used to be Marion Peck’s painting studio, and I love that room, and I’ll sit while Doug mixes, adjusts, edits, programs more drums. . . I will literally sit there and write as close as I can to what I think the final lyrics will be, or at least what I feel comfortable singing at the time,” he said.
My Chemical Romance’s latest studio album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoyswas released in 2010. Following their breakup, they released the compilation May death never stop you in 2014, a greatest hits set that included a new song, “Fake Your Death”.