I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love is the first studio album by My Chemical Romance, released on July 23, 2002 by Eyeball Records. It was produced by Geoff Rickly with assistance from Alex Saavedra, recorded and mixed by John Naclerio, and mastered by Ryan Ball. Gerard Way, Mikey Way, Ray Toro, Frank Iero, and Matt Pelissier have writing credits on this album.

The title of the album came from a short story Gerard had previously written- many of the songs on the album used recycled titles and lines from his older short stories and other fiction. He described the song writing process for this album as treating each song as if it were a contained short story. He attempted to embody a unique character for the point of view for each song, and each song has a plot that it follows (regardless of whether or not that plot is super clear to a listener). Allegedly, producer Geoff Rickly gave Gerard the suggestion that he should approach writing the album in the same way they approached writing their comics, which is what Gerard had been going to school for before they created My Chemical Romance. Some fans describe the album as a concept album, or perhaps a prequel to the story of the Demolition Lovers covered on Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, but aside from the song Demolition Lovers itself, any connections between the storylines in each of the songs on this album or between this album and subsequent albums is purely fan interpretation and has never been confirmed or denied by the band.

When listening to the album, certain themes and motifs come up across multiple songs, such as the image of running away from vampires or some other sort of supernatural enemy, and the idea of two destructive lovers with an “us against the world” mentality, which is likely why certain listeners believe this is a concept album with a loose storyline to follow. The main topics covered within the lyrics are anger and bitterness towards the world, suicidality, addiction, self-destruction, and emotional vulnerability. This lyrical subject matter definitely set My Chemical Romance apart from other post-hardcore and emotional hardcore bands of the time. MCR are considered today to be tastemakers and trendsetters in the world of emo music, being some of the first to combine their own unique musical stylings with explicit lyrics about weapons, self harm, and addiction, as well as ghosts, vampires, and literary references. This sort of imagery has become pretty synonymous with the “emo” genre these days, as is the level of theatrics and high concepts that MCR would become so well known for. At the time, MCR rejected the label of “emo” and have always adamantly referred to themselves simply as a “rock band.”

The album was recorded and produced over the course of seven days, a ridiculously tight timeline, but this was due to the band essentially having no money at the time. The entire band plus some of the production crew all lived together in one single-bed hotel room during that week of development, recording, and production. The time constraints this album was under has led to some interesting lore, for example, Frank Iero only had the time to play guitar on two songs from this album- Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us and Early Sunsets Over Monroeville. Gerard also ended up having to record some of the vocals for this album while they were actively recovering from emergency dental surgery as the band couldn’t afford any additional studio time. As far as I know, we don’t know which vocals were recorded while Gerard was like… bleeding from his gums with a mouth stuffed full of gauze, moaning in actual pain while trying to sing, but my personal hypothesis is that the outro of Early Sunsets Over Monroeville contains some post-tooth-surgery vocals (once you hear the lisp on “there’th no room in thith hell” and the sharp inhales of pain, you will not be able to unhear it), and I also think Vampires Will Never Hurt You contains some pained vocals as well. Those are just guesses on my part, though.

The tiny budget and super short production/recording time all contribute to Bullets having a very DIY sound, especially when compared to MCR’s other records. The band has also said that at this time they were struggling to find a direction, experimenting with many different sounds and styles as they tried to find exactly what they wanted to say with their music and how they wanted their music to sound. Vampires Will Never Hurt You was the promotional single released for the album, which was recorded in Matt Pelissier’s attic for the demo tape that has come to be known by fans as “the attic demos.” The other singles for Bullets were Honey, This Mirror Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us and Headfirst for Halos, which became radio singles in 2003 and 2004 respectively, after Vampires made its radio debut on the college radio station WSOU, sparking a bit of interest in the band.

At the time of release, Bullets was met with very little fanfare, with hardly any critics speaking about it. The reviews that did exist at the time were pretty mixed. Overall it seems that the consensus was that the album was decent, and was relatively unique especially in terms of concepts and lyrical content, but the fact that it was all kind of scrounged together in a week was reflected in the quality. It also began the criticism which many people have always felt about the band and still feel to this day, that the lyrics when read separately from hearing them sung along to the music come across as whiny, melancholic, nonsensical, or just poorly written. Personally, I hate this criticism because, like… these lyrics WEREN’T released as poems separate from the experience of hearing them sung. They’re lyrics. In order to have the full context you need to hear them sung, with Gerard’s delivery, over the instrumentals, with the production, etc. THAT’S HOW SONGS WORK. But whatever, basically what I’m saying is the album wasn’t a huge success, but a lot of critics thought it was relatively impressive for a debut.

MCR started playing a huge number of live shows as promotion for the album, which led to them becoming more well known in the New Jersey hardcore scene, especially as people heard their songs on local college radio stations. Frank Iero’s existing connections in the New Jersey scene due to his time as the frontman in the band Pencey Prep right before joining MCR were an asset to the band at this time, as well as the limited support Eyeball Records was able to provide as a tiny independent label. The original press of Bullets was 100 copies, but allegedly (according to Frank Iero in like 2016) an unknown number of those 100 CDs were actually misprints that had mariachi music on them rather than any of MCR’s songs, which is a silly piece of trivia and also if anyone owns one of the misprinted mariachi CDs in a Bullets case I hope you appreciate the gem that you have.