While a certain group of people may see the emo side of the genre as “devil music,” I’m not talking about the holy trinity that they think of.

No, I am talking about the Emo Holy Trinity: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, and Panic! at the Disco. Alternatively, they’re the Original Emo Trinity if you’re one of the heathens that believes in the New Trinity.

Aside from Green Day and Paramore, these three bands (can we even call Panic! a band anymore?) get the most radio airplay and are often the most referenced when describing the genre. Granted, most of the songs are around 10 years old, but they get played. And in the case of Panic! and MCR, there’s basically only one song that the radio ever plays.

Fall Out Boy does well in radio airplay, but more of their songs come from the post-hiatus shift towards mainstream. You’ve probably heard Patrick Stump mushing all the words together in “Sugar, We’re Going Down” and “Thnks fr th Mmrs;” he must have spent the hiatus learning to enunciante because “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light ‘Em Up),” “Centuries,” “Uma Thurman,” and “Irresitible” (also featuring Demi Levato) lend themselves much easier to lyric videos.

My Chemical Romance gets basically one song for airplay, two if you’re very lucky. While you might recognize the opening lines their most famous song  or understand references to the G above Middle C, you’re lucky to hear “Welcome to the Black Parade,” on the radio. You’re far more likely to hear “SING,” which comes off their most mainstream album.

For a very long time, Panic! only had one song on the radio – “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” – and Brendon Urie is very tired of that song. Recently, “Victorious,”  a song from their latest album, has gotten airplay.

Some of the airplay disparity may be from Fall Out Boy being the only band signed to a major label, because if you didn’t notice, they’re the only one with a VEVO; but that’s all secondary and this is really an aside that I thought of while I was writing something farther down, so just deal with it because it might come up in a later post.

Now, they’re not just called the trinity because there’s three of them. They actually have the roles of the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that because of their official breakup, My Chemical Romance is the Holy Spirit of the trinity. They’re not here, but they’re here, there’s not really a way to argue that they could be another aspect. OK, maybe you could argue that they’re the father because they started the earliest, but no one does that.

Now, as to who’s the Father and who’s the Son, there’s a bit of a difference. There are strong cases for either option.

The prevailing theology has Panic! as the Father and FOB as the son; I, on the other hand, hold that FOB is the Father and Panic! is the son.

The main reasoning for the prevailing theology is that Panic!, while not being consistent in musical style or group members, has stayed a band, more or less, since they came to be. And Fall Out Boy, like Jesus, had a hiatus and arose. This reasoning is straightforward from a symbolic standpoint. Panic!, like God, has always been there in some form or another; while FOB came, “died,” and came again.

My view, however, is more logical. Fall Out Boy (really, Pete Wentz) is the reason that Panic! is famous. FOB hit the mainstream before Panic!, who started as a blink-182 cover band (they have a great origin story, by the way). And Panic! basically used the dial-up internet of 2004 to reach out to FOB and long story short, they were signed to Pete’s record label Decaydance. Does the Son not come of the Father?

Further evidence for my view comes from the fact that Brendon Urie has appeared in various FOB songs/videos. He appears in the video for “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me’” as a minion to an rather Alex DeLarge-esque vampire. He sings part of the chorus of “Dance, Dance” on “What A Catch, Donnie” along with appearing in the video (possibly with other members of Panic!). He also appears on “20 Dollar Nosebleed” singing part of the chorus by himself (“Permanent jetlag . . . please let me in”) and some with Patrick (the rest of the chorus plus most of the “oh”s/etc), you just gotta trust me on this. Does the Son not appear in the Father’s creation?

So there are merits to the symbolism of both theologies, but as it goes with religion, only my interpretation is right.