My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade

The Black Parade is the third studio album by American emo rock band My Chemical Romance, originally released in October 2006 via Reprise Records.

At the heart of My Chemical Romance (MCR) lore is the story of lead singer / songwriter / mouthpiece Gerard Way, an animator who decided to abandon illustrations and do "something with his life" in the wake of 9/11. Needless to say, that "important" thing was MCR, which quickly rose to prominence among the emo and neo-punk bands that cluttered the rock landscape of the 2000s thanks in large part to "I'm Not OK (I Promise)". a surging piece of emo pop with a hook as ridiculously catchy as its title was ridiculous.

But, anybody who didn't follow the fashions of emo and punk closely might have ignored the group's tragic, romantic neo-goth image and merely assumed that MCR was another good poppy punk one-hit wonder. MCR intended to dispel all such misconceptions with The Black Parade, an unabashed, old-fashioned concept album, complete with characters wandering through a vague narrative that concerns very big themes like death. Actually, death is the only big theme on The Black Parade, which shouldn't come as a big surprise, tragedy and melodrama are hardwired in the group's DNA.

The Black Parade isn’t MCR's first concept album, either. Their 2002 debut, I Brought You My Bullets, and its follow-up, Three Cheers, told the interlocking story of doomed lovers on the run from vengeful vampires or some such nonsense, but only the hardcore who were willing to analyse endlessly on the Internet were aware of this. Based on pure sound, MCR was an emo-punk band through and through, screaming out their feelings as if they were revelations, so it was easy to assume that their music was merely autobiographical.

MCR took great pains to have The Black Parade seem like its own theatrical work, launching a whole Web-based campaign, filled with videos and interviews explaining how the album tells the tale of "the Patient," a young man dying of cancer in a hospital bed who flashes back on his undistinguished life upon the moment of his death, and how the band got so into this project they considered themselves not MCR, but a band called the Black Parade - shades of The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper! Naturally, those allusions are quite deliberate, and one that MCR played up in that pre-release campaign, dropping liberal reference to Queen (particularly A Night At The Opera) and Pink Floyd's The Wall as well.

The story of The Black Parade is very similar to The Wall - Pink and the Patient run through a litany of childhood and adulthood traumas; absent fathers loom large; many of the main character's flaws are cruelly deemed the fault of the mother -- and there are plenty of flourishes like on Roger Waters' magnum opus

MCR shares a love of classic metal manifests itself in both pummelling riffs and soaring guitar solos, plus they also have a flair for melody, two things that give their self belief rock muscle and grandeur. If MCR didn't have these gifts, The Black Parade would collapse in a pile of drama club clichés, sophomoric self-pity, and an adolescent obsession with death, yet they manage to skirt such a disaster even if they flirt with it shamelessly.

There are a lot of similarities here: the bulk of the record is firmly within MCR's comfort zone, which helps make the extra flair stand out all the more. MCR does their signature blend of Sturm und Drang better than ever - "Dead!" rushes along on a series of escalating hooks, "This Is How I Disappear" surges with purpose - and when they're paired with tunes that do break the mould, like the wonderfully pompous title track "Welcome To The Black Parade" or "Teenagers," it makes for a record that's their strongest, most cohesive yet.

This double album 2LP record set is a 2021 reissue on black vinyl with an etching on Side D housed in a gatefold sleeve with a printed insert, pressed in Europe via Reprise Records.