Reviews

My Chemical Romance is almost as ridiculous as the title of their break out single “I’m Not Okay (I Promise).”  Their first two albums are, get this, a set of concept albums about murderous lovers on the run from vampires or some nonsense like that.  Their name is a clumsy allusion to an overly medicated culture and the singer’s emotional problems.  Everything about this band was stacked up to make for another terrible enormous emo epic.  No one outside the readership of “Alternative Press” expected anything more than another failed album about vampires and self-loathing.  No body expected it to be listenable, let alone actually good.
 
Let it be said now, this album is not nearly as adventurous as the band touts it to be; much of the music is well within the band’s comfort zone of power pop and emo-punk, only now it has flourishes of Queen behind the depression.  The Black Parade is a concept album that harkens back to the hey-day of ostentatious prog rock epics; in so many words, this is My Chemical Romance trying to write both The Wall and A Night at the Opera at the same time.  Here’s the kicker—it works.
 
Before, the band simply had ideas far beyond their station and the music stank of it.  For this album, they had the epiphany that not every song had to be cranked to eleven and steeped in AFI-esque emo-punk-goth.  They went to the Seventies and studied.  They emerged to write this album under the pseudonym “The Black Parade,” which is a none too subtle allusion to the Beatles writing as “Sgt. Pepper.”  All that they’ve done before has been recycled in with the new material they’ve lifted or stole from Pink Floyd and Queen, and the result is the most consistently satisfying and surprising record they’ve written.
 
This is a concept album about death and dying; it’s the story of a character, simply known as The Patient, who has just died of cancer despite not doing much with his life.  Singer Gerard Way theorizes that when the grim reaper comes for you, he comes in the form of the person’s most vivid and fond memory.  Since The Patient has not done anything with his short life, his memory is the day when he as a child and his father took him to see a marching band.
 
The album’s introduction is a brief burst of sarcasm and despair called “The End.” where Way sets the mood by commenting on and antagonizing his mourners, “so gather ‘round piggies and kiss this goodbye.”  This bleeds into the up-tempo rocker “Dead!” which proclaims The Patient’s end with glee.  Next are two typical My Chemical Romance songs that outline the Patient’s life, apparently sleeping around and abusing alcohol or drugs.  The title track combines the memory and The Patient’s jumping off point.  From here on out the album summarizes the Patient’s life, good and bad.  The usual litany of absent dads and troubled moms comes around, much like The Wall.  The other logical center point of the album is the subdued, piano driven “Cancer.”  From here the album spirals into The Patient’s death again, ending with “Famous Last Words” an optimistic hopeful take on his passing with a chorus wailing “I am not afraid to keep on living, I am not afraid to walk this world alone.”
 
Writing as The Black Parade, My Chemical Romance found an artistic freedom that their angst-ridden emo persona would not allow them.  With this album, they now have the freedom to write whatever they want.
 
And for all the aspirations of Seventies rock grandeur; this album’s closest cousin is a more recent epic.  Perhaps it’s fate that Gerard Way’s new look makes the likeness to The Black Parade and The Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness inevitable. Lucky for him, this album is a success.