Hit after hit, buried under a mix nobody was in the room for.

Thirteen tracks, thirty nine minutes, and almost nothing I reach for the skip button on. Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is the strongest studio record My Chemical Romance ever made and it isn't a close vote. Many of these tracks still get put on repeat in my Spotify playlists.

The trick is that nothing here stops moving. THE GHOST OF YOU is the only real ballad on the record and it still punches you in the face like everything around it. INTERLUDE gives you 57 seconds of air, then THANK YOU FOR THE VENOM kicks the door back in, my favorite studio cut this band ever put to tape. I'M NOT OKAY (I PROMISE) is a personal anthem, to equate my own lived experience in high school. YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DO TO GUYS LIKE US IN PRISON and IT'S NOT A FASHION STATEMENT, IT'S A DEATHWISH carry the other half of the argument: a band that could write a radio single and then hand the fans something even deeper.

HELENA still stands as the quintessential emo anthem.

HELENA is the track that outlives the whole conversation. Gerard wrote it for his grandmother a month after she died, and twenty two years later it still hits the hearts of anyone listening. CEMETERY DRIVE and GIVE 'EM HELL, KID sit right behind it, and neither one is bench material. Both are still good enough to earn a slot in the setlist, which is more than most second-album deep cuts manage.

My one real complaint is the 2004 mix, and it isn't really the band's fault. They left for tour in March 2004 with the record mostly unmixed, so Benson finished it without them and pulled in Rich Costey on four songs just to find a starting point. What came back is clean to a fault. Guitars front and center, drums and low end buried under them for most of the album. Costey came back to lead the 2025 remix and gave it the crunch and growl it should have had the first time.

TO THE END, HANG 'EM HIGH and I NEVER TOLD YOU WHAT I DO FOR A LIVING sit further toward the hardcore end than the radio end, and unfortunately are some of the more forgettable pieces of the record. Not bad, just not repeatable the way the singles are. That's the half point this doesn't get, and it's the only one I'd take off.

One of the strongest albums to come out of the 2000s.