My Chemical Freak: My Chemical Romance All The Time

Thanks to reader Brett Cooper for sending this to us.

Three Cheers Vinyl Review

The much-anticipated release of Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge on vinyl was topped-off when I surprisingly received it in the mail a brief 4 days after Warners/Nonesuch had sent me my confirmation email that it had been shipped. Usually the transit time in the past has been in excess of 3 weeks due to it being shipped as a parcel. Looks like they’re shipping these out via Priority Mail for US customers, more than likely so that they will be received in time for Christmas.

So there was a good indication that this was going to be fun. Opened up the box, broke out my mini knife to cut open a slit down the right side of the LP slipcase (this allows the shrink wrap to stay on the slipcase and preserves any stickers that have been placed on the shrink wrap and also preserved the slipcase itself from wear and tear), and popped-out the contents. As promised, it comes with an MCR sticker, Three Cheers logo stencil (complete with guns). a type-written lyric sheet that is much more easily readible than that of the CD jacket, and the flip side has “production” lyrics and notes, some handwritten, some typed. Whether or not these are actually from the production of the album is open to speculation. They do look like the real deal, however, as I do possess actual production notes and handwritten lyrics in my Alice Cooper collection, so I’ve seen these types of things before. If not, they did a good job of fudging it. The vinyl itself is a beautiful, deep, blood red. Very cool. That being said, the overall packaging is not as extravagant as the packaging was for The Black Parade deluxe vinyl edition (I literally get a rush every time that I open up my copy of the album because the packaging and heavy-duty vinyl is so frigging cool), but it’s a passable job.

But this is where my pleasure kind of ends. As all vinyl buffs know, the real test is what the album sounds like. Backing up a bit, I have a really nice turntable. It plays just about anything in any condition and makes it sound good. When I put Three Cheers on last night, I literally wondered if there was something wrong with my needle. Did I need to get a new one? The album sounded so scratchy and distorted that it made me wonder if I had gotten a defective copy or something. After about 4 songs, and the scratchiness and distortions getting worse, I decided to see if it’s my turntable or the record by putting on The Black Parade. Sure enough, crisp, clear, organic, goodness comes from my speakers when I put TBP on. So it’s not my needle. Put the Three Cheers back on. Same scratchiness, same distorition. This is a bummer. I already realized that the album is not pressed on 180-gram heavy-duty vinyl (a serious oversight, in my opinion), but the production values in
its analog transfer are seriously lacking. I don’t know what else to say. Sidenote: the jacket that the record, itself, sits in inside the slipcase, is already tearing on all three unopened sides. Either the jacket was a little too small and tore when the records were put into them, or the records were put in too forcefully.

My overall grade is a C-. B+ for packaging, D- for the quality of the vinyl record. The record comes off as more like a bootleg quality of some pirated copy of a record you might pick up at a flea market in Tijuana. I would like to hear what other people have to say. Maybe I did simply get a defective copy. Somehow I doubt it.

I wear this on my sleeve…

Brett Cooper