#bulletproof heart and destroya are great examples of what i'm talking about btw

[raytorosaurus]

and by this i DON'T mean "the virtuosic, technical one" and "the passionate, instinctive one" – my point is that neither of them fit the roles you'd expect them to. it's more complicated than metal vs punk and it's way more complicated than lead vs rhythm and it's way more complicated than technique vs passion. ray's one of the most emotive players i've ever heard and frank is a hugely accomplished musician in his own right and like. ray largely learned by ear playing along to metal records in his bedroom, but he’s also really into classical guitar, and him incorporating those classical sensibilities and interesting chord progressions into bullets really set them apart from other punk/hardcore bands on the scene and was one of the things that initially drew frank to them. and frank had lived and breathed the diy punk scene and was playing in bands by the time he knew three chords, but he's also a legacy musician who grew up surrounded by blues music and musicians and it shows. ray plays the solos but he also often plays ostensibly "rhythm" parts (groundwork chords, power chords, keeping time), and frank often plays licks and melodic embellishments typically associated with lead, and if you track through the albums you see them starting to experiment more and more with what you can do with dual guitars as a partnership rather than trading off lead and rhythm parts or just harmonising with each other – by danger days (besides the solos) it's genuinely difficult to blindly guess which guitarist is playing which part because they influenced each other so much. and according to frank, they literally never even argued until the very end.

it just makes me insane their styles SHOULDN'T work so well together! and the fact that they do is so…fitting. form matches content, you know – because mcr is inherently contradictory, it's about subverting expectations and blurring boundaries. their styles work together because they should contradict each other and because they're individually self-contradictory and because they managed to find that space where their points of difference overlap and complement each other. it's literally what mcr is all ABOUT…not to be dramatic but it's why this band feels fated! all the individual parts of the band work so well together to make it exactly what it is and nobody will ever be able to imitate or recreate it, partly because if you're trying to imitate it or recreate it you've failed step one! you can't make that in a lab baby it just has to happen!! you literally can't put mcr in a box!!

thinking about ray and frank’s weirdo guitar partnership and how it’s the heart of mcr. they give life to gerard’s vision in a literal musical sense but also in that mcr could not have meant what mcr means without the very specific way their styles work together