After an eight-year wait, My Chemical Romance are finally back with a new song, “The Foundations of Decay.” It’s a vintage blast of MCR — a sprawling, six-minute epic that blends to-the-rafters emo rock 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 a single show that December, but the first wave of Covid-19 forced them to put their touring plans on hold. The dates were initially rescheduled for 2021 but pushed again because of ongoing Covid concerns. The band is now set to launch a UK and European tour this month, with a North American leg beginning Aug. 20 in Oklahoma City.
Despite all the tour plans, My Chemical Romance hadn’t expressly said whether or not they would be releasing new music (an ostensibly new instrumental track was featured in a Jan. 2020 teaser for the initial reunion shows). Still, frontman Gerard Way did reveal in an interview last year that he’s been working on songs, though he didn’t specify whether they were for MCR, a solo project, or something else entirely.
“[W]hat’s been working lately is sitting with [engineer] Doug [McKean], working on the music, and then I’ll just go over to my office — which used to be Marion Peck’s painting studio, and I love that room — and I will sit while Doug mixes, tweaks, edits, programs more drums. . . I’ll literally sit there and I will write as close as possible to what I think are gonna be either the final lyrics, or at least what I’m comfortable singing at that moment,” he said.
My Chemical Romance’s last studio album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoyswas released in 2010. Following their break-up, they released the compilation May Death Never Stop You In 2014, a greatest hits set that featured one new song, “Fake Your Death.”