So long and goodnight...

Photo: Dean Chalkley/NME

Last night a blog post appeared on My Chemical Romance's website. The contents of this blog was all that MCR fans had hoped they would never read:

"Being in this band for the past 12 years has been a true blessing. We've gotten to go places we never knew we would. We've been able to see and experience things we never imagined possible. We've shared the stage with people we admire, people we look up to, and best of all, our friends. And now, like all great things, it has come time for it to end. Thanks for all of your support, and for being part of the adventure."

I personally first heard the news from my sister, who had read the news on Facebook. As a big fan of MCR, I'm not ashamed to admit that I had a little cry and then spent the whole day eating Maltesers to try and console myself.

My Chemical Romance have meant a lot to me throughout my teenage years. I got into them around the release of Danger Days in 2010, and it was the soundtrack to a trip to Germany in the spring of 2011 - listening to it now still reminds me of the beauty of the first blossomings of spring, and a feeling of finding who I was as a person. I don't count myself as one of the MCR fans who says "MCR saved my life" - I'm thankful that although I've had difficult experiences throughout my adolescence, it's never been so bad that I've become suicidal or attempted to take my own life. But perhaps MCR are responsible for that to an extent. Through their music it really hit home to me how important it is to be who you want to be and not let anyone else put you down, and I now find myself in a state of blissful apathy as to what other people think of me and my personal interests. Through the MCR fan community I felt accepted by millions of people with whom I shared this common interest, at a time when I felt like a total outsider at school with no firm group of friends. Whenever I felt down I was able to tell myself that I wasn't totally alone.I now have a really close group of friends and we accept each others' differences. And we are stone cold crazy and don't care who knows it - before MCR I couldn't see how I could be friends with any of the girls I knew as we were so different. Because of MCR I know that that doesn't matter and that it's OK to be different.

The band in 2002

It feels very strange writing this, and I know many other MCR fans are in a state of shock today. There was absolutely no precedent to the announcement of the split, even though some fans panicked when Conventional Weapons, an album of scrapped material from 2009, was released, thinking the band had made comments that they would only release that material in the event of a split. By all accounts writing and recording for the band's fifth album was reported to be going well. Only last week Kerrang! claimed they were "primed for an explosive return". And comments from the band members themselves seemed just as positive - in an interview with Kevin Smith, Gerard Way had said that the progress of the album, which had the working title of MCR5, was ''going very quickly'', and that he was ''very excited'' about it. I can't help but contrast this situation with the break up of one of my most beloved bands, the Stone Roses - in the last year before their split, two members, including one of the band's founding members, left in ugly circumstances. Within two months of a disastrous performance at Reading Festival in 1996 the band had split. MCR's split is not comparable in any way.

Whilst I have seen some fans trying to convince themselves that the MCR website was hacked, unfortunately I think we have to accept that MCR is over. I wish them all well in their future projects, but I hope that some sort of explanation for the band's split will come to light at some time. MCR have always been a band who cared deeply for their fans, and it seems to me that one paragraph is just not enough to draw a line under what could be described as an attachment lasting 12 years. And as someone who has great respect for this band, I think it would not be befitting for them to bow out without giving their devoted fans an explanation.

Time for some more Maltesers.