Digipak Analysis My Chemical Romance

– Life On The Murder Scene

‘Life On The Murder Scene’ by My Chemical Romance is an extended edition live digipak version of the album ‘Three Cheers For

Sweet Revenge’. The digipak features one CD of live tracks and two DVD’s of live performances, a tour diary, the bands current music videos and how they were made. ‘Life On The Murder Scene’ was released in 2006 and is officially classified as Alternative

Rock, Punk Rock and Post-Hardcore.

The Digipak

The overall theme of the digipak revolves around the characters the ‘Demolition Lovers’. Demolition Lovers is the title of a song from My Chemical Romance’s first album (released in 2002). An illustrated version of the characters is featured on the cover of the original album, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, but live action versions of the characters are brought to life in more detail on the digipak. Digipaks tend to feature extra content and are bought by committed fans of the musicians. This implies that the fans

purchasing the digipack would pick up on the ‘Demolition Lovers’ intertextual reference. The albums visuals also make direct links to specific lyrics in the song such as, “And in this pool of blood, and as we’re touching hands, and as we’re falling down”. The digipack theme also shares similarities with various magazine photoshoots from the same era of the band covered in fake blood. This connection would be noted by true fans.

The bands genre is clearly evident from the design of the digipak. It uses a limited pallet of colours mainly made up of black, white and red. Black is often the main colour associated with Rock related genres which immediately makes it easily recognisable as a Rock album as most the digipak is coloured black. Red is another colour often associated with heavy Rock genres as it connotes danger, and some more negative stereotypes of Rock music is that it is ‘dangerous’, or ‘damaging’. The digipak uses this stereotype to it’s advantage however, as the ‘Demolition Lovers’ theme implies the a tragic love story involving death. The digipak uses red in a bold way by covering the ‘lovers’ in blood. This further connotes death, tragedy, and danger. The ‘tragic’ element is implied through the title of the digipak, ‘Life On The Murder Scene’. This creates the impression that the lovers could be murder victims.

theme of the digipak holds a lot of meaning and depth. This is quite stereotypical for a Rock band, especially a band like My Chemical Romance who are known for using deep and meaningful lyrics. This style of digipak would be appreciated by fans of the band as they would be able to pick up on the intertextual references and read between the lines to understand the deeper meaning behind the theme in the same way they would do to songs by the band.

The colour red also connotes love and passion which suitably fits the ‘tragic lovers’ theme. It also heavily contrasts with the smart black and white wedding clothing worn by the lovers. An example of this is shown as the woman is wearing red lipstick, yet the mans mouth is covered in blood. Another way the colour red is used to juxtapose love and death is on the inside cover. The woman is shown to be dead, and the area above her heart is stained red with blood, this implies she has died, but the positioning above the heart and the colour also represents a deeper theme involving love. The entire

The digipak uses a variety of different shot types and imagery to present the theme and tell the story of the ‘Demolition Lovers’. Fans of musicians tend to purchase digipacks to gain access to extra content and information. Using a variety of imagery inside the digipack makes it much more exciting and engaging for the bands audience, especially in a digipak like this where the fans may try to piece together the different clues in the images to workout their interpretation of the theme/story. A unique example of exciting use of imagery in this digipak for example is how once the discs are removed from the holder the image beneath is different, (the lovers are in the same position but are now covered in blood).

text is written in a serif typeface/font. Serif is generally an ‘older’ style of font, however, using it works well on the digipak as the ‘old’ style matches the older style of clothing being worn by the characters, especially the wedding dress. The digipak also has the necessary logos/symbols clearly visible. Most importantly these include, the Parental Advisory logo, the official DVD logo, and the digipaks bar code.

The digipak features the recognisable My Chemical Romance logo/font. The white logo clearly stands out against the black background on the front cover of the digipak making it easily noticeable and identifiable by fans. The rest of the digipak’s

‘Life On The Murder Scene’ comes with an insert which closely follows the theme of the rest of the digipak. The Insert contains even more images linked to the digipak’s story/theme, as well as detailed information about the digipak’s content, along with a message to the reader from the band. This extra information is what would be expected inside a digipak as digipaks are commonly bought and found out by committed fans of the musicians who want the extra content. This makes the fans who buy digipak’s an ‘Active Audience’. This is what Blumler and Katz call Uses and Gratifications Theory.