My Chemical Romance returned to UK shores last night for the first time in a decade. Playing a triumphant comeback gig at The Eden Project in Cornwall, one of many shows the band has lined up over the next week culminating in a residency at MK Stadium in Milton Keynes.
The bands stunning return to the live arena wasn’t the only thing on the fans minds though. With many taking to social media after the show with one question in mind ‘What is Swarm?’ you see, eagle eyed fans took to social media with pictures of the band’s new merchandise much of which displayed the word SWARM on it, as well as displaying images of flies, while other items featured the words DECAY and MORTE on them.
This has lead fans to believe that is the official kickoff of My Chemical Romance’s new era, and is directly connected to the band’s new album, which some are speculating could simply be called SWARM.
But, things get more interesting from there, as this very thing could have in fact been teased by Gerard Way himself nearly 3 years ago. 10 days after the bands official return show on December 19th 2019 in L.A. On December 29th Gerard Way shared a picture of himself in a Fly Mask simply captioned ‘Bug Summoning’.
Those of you out there that followed all of the pre tour announcement hype at the beginning of 2020 will remember a vignette entitled ‘Summoning’ which showed a young boy being lead through a My Chemical Multiverse of all the bands previous era’s and featured the skull faced figures from the Milton Keynes tour announcement poster and video.
Which leads us back to the present with the bands new single The Foundations of Decay. Their first in 8 years. The prominent featuring of the word Decay on the bands new merchandise ties directly to the new single, the bands name on said single art is spelled backwards, which would appear forwards in a mirror or a mirror dimension perhaps?
We have the Bug Summoning picture from 2019, the Summoning video from 2020 and we have the merchandise featuring SWARM and the fly logo. So are they all related? is the band hinting that the old MCR is dead, and they are using a very literal Foundation of Decay to rise again? are the fans the Swarm that surrounded the carcass of the band in it’s previous forms and has brought it back to life?
Have they already moved on from the more gothic motif that surrounded their return and replaced it with this new era fronted by this SWARM campaign? is it all somehow connected and it’s been in front of us this whole time, and was that picture of Gerard the start of this whole thing?
Do you guy think it is all connected is the start of the build for a new album and new era? or do you think it’s just a cool merch capsule for this run of shows? are there any more hints or clues that we may have missed? let us know your thoughts on what you think SWARM is and what it all could mean in the bigger picture or the wider My Chemical Romance mythology.
It seems fairly obvious at this point that if there is an album number five from My Chemical Romance, that they won’t be revisiting the fabled Paper Kingdom concept from years ago and it will be something new. Whatever it is, I think we can all agree that it is a very exciting time to be an MCR fan, and now we enjoy the ride the band has planned for us, whatever it may end up being.
Photos: Gerard Way via Instagram
The_MCR_Archive via Twitter
Definitely. Obvious they’re going to release a new album with the acronym swarm or similar on 3rd October.