I Brought You My Bullets...

Two days after Frank joined My Chemical Romance, the band went into the studio to record their first album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. They had only been together for about 3 months, and they had only written the songs on the album. Bullets was made to capture a moment in time, the genesis of the band. MCR drove to Nada in upstate New York to record in John Naclerio’s studio, which was in a nice house on a dead end street that didn’t seem to fit in with its surroundings. Naclerio had built the studio himself in his mother’s basement, and they often had to stop recording because she was vacuuming upstairs. Geoff Rickly, the lead singer of Thursday, produced the album. It was recorded and mixed in 10 days, from 15 May 2002 to 25 May. Text around the edge of the disc reads, "Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws and will result in Gerard coming to your house and sucking your blood."

Gerard was extremely nervous about recording his vocals, as the vocals on the demos they had made had come out sounding terrible and nothing like what he sounded like live. He was over-thinking what he wanted to do, and an insane storm hit just as he was about to start recording (the wind was so strong they thought Mikey was going to blow away). Alex Saavedra, the owner of Eyeball records, came into the recording room and gave him a hug for good luck, then punched him in the face.

While they were recording, Gerard was having teeth problems. He had a hole in one of his teeth and an abscess in the hole, which was pushing against the nerves in his face and making it look like he had Parkinson’s. He went to several hospitals to fix it (in the liner notes of the album the band thanks Christine and Sarah for getting Gerard to all the hospitals), and they thought it was facial nerve paralysis, but no one could figure out what was really wrong for a long time.  Gerard had to sing most of the album in intense pain because they had an extremely limited budget and not a lot of time.

The album cover features Harry Houdini hanging upside down in a straightjacket. Gerard stated that it is not a digital image, like many people thought, but was in fact made with some watercolour, some borax, some plastic wrap, and a colour photocopier in the Eyeball Records offices. The inside cover read "Merci Pour Le Venin", which means "Thank You For The Venom" in French.

Before the album was released in late July, a summer sampler called Like Phantoms, Forever was handed out. There are only 100 hard copies of it, and all of them are numbered in red ink. The cover is based on the poster of a horror movie called The Tomb Of Ligeia. This EP included a live cover of Morrisey's Jack The Ripper, which you can download by clicking on the album cover below.