The Chronicles of Life and Death

This is about keeping life in perspective: you live and you die.

Many fans resented the band's mainstream popularity of their previous album, The Young and the Hopeless, and accused them of selling out. "At the time, we took it to heart," Joel confessed to Alter the Press. "By the end of the record cycle we had gotten a little bitter and you can hear that on our next album [The Chronicles of Life and Death]. We felt rejected and abandoned and I wish I had the understanding then that I did now of how things work out and the acceptance I have of people and their feelings. I could have enjoyed that record a little more. That’s not to say we didn't have a lot of good times, because we had a wild ride, but there was a side of it which was really hard to deal with, like feeling abandoned by a scene which we really loved."

Billy Martin on the album title (to Kerrang! magazine): "It's funny because the name of the record came up before we'd even started working on it. We talked about what we wanted to do on this record and Joel told us that he was writing a lot about death and things that you think about before you die, so it just seemed to fit perfectly."