REVIEW: "The Black Parade"

My Chemical Romance
The Black Parade
© 2006 Reprise

With their first two albums, Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love and Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, My Chemical Romance quickly carved out a place for themselves in the pop-punk world. The critics were generally favorable, sales were strong, and they wound up with a legion of teenage fans, but nothing about them seemed unique. With their 2006 album The Black Parade, they sought to change that through a massive expansion of their sound.

Their raw, bouncy, post-punk style is still present, though it is augmented by big, multi-layered arrangements and a hard rock edge that is highly reminiscent of late 70s rock, partiuclarly Queen. Accompanying this musical expansion is a strong thematic current to the album, that theme being the fairly broad one of death. Lyricist Gerard Way does his best to wrangle such a general concept with attitude, frequently playing the part of parade marshal to “the Black Parade,” an, at times, bitterly sarcastic, at others, wholly empathetic, psychopomp to a legion of tragic souls.

This approach and attitude is demonstrated to a varying degree through the album, with the excellence of the song often depending on how well these aspects are incorporated.

The track “Welcome to the Black Parade” is a particularly strong example of the “big” sound of the album. It starts quietly, setting the story of the song, and rapidly grows in intensity and scale. Eventually, about two minutes in, it explodes into a full-on post-punk sound, before smoothly blends back in the epic, showy elements from earlier. The video is well suited to the song, paralleling the story and attitude without stating it outright.

“Welcome to the Black Parade”


Other tracks do not diverge quite so far from the previously established My Chemical Romance formula. “Dead,” for example, is mostly done in a straight, staccato punk style. But even here, we see signs of their harkening back to 70s style rock which, interestingly, results in a purer punk sound than we have previously seen from the band.

“Dead”


The album is not all big songs though, and includes some of the mellow, emotional songs that have previously resulted in people branding the band “Emo.” Whether or not you take that appellation as a slight, it certainly fits for a few of the tracks, particularly “I Don’t Love You” and “Cancer.” In the context of the album, these songs, with their trend towards sentimentality, seem slightly out of place. Your opinion of them will depend heavily on taste. I find them maudlin and bland, but some love this sort of stuff.

“Cancer”


Another awkward fit is “Teenagers.” While musically it fits smoothly into the album—with a very effective use of hard rock elements—the overt statement behind the song does not. Independently, it is not a bad song and has, arguably, a good message (regarding teen violence), but it stands out like a sore thumb in the rest of the album, which is otherwise devoid of such proselytizing.

“Teenagers”


To wax personally for a moment: Until recently, I never cared much for what I had heard of My Chemical Romance. I found their music to be competent, if generic, pop-punk and their fans to be whiny emo-kids. However, I enjoyed The Umbrella Academy—Way’s Dark Horse Comics debut—so I decided to give them another chance. Though I remain unenthused by their earlier albums, The Black Parade is an excellent work, not only of pop-punk, but of contemporary rock. It shows a band who is testing the boundaries of their style and identity and succeeding. If you are like me and had written off My Chemical Romance based on their earlier output, give the The Black Parade a chance. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you hear.

RECCOMENDED IF… you are looking for some good mainstream rock. Though the album occasionally delves too far towards melancholy, it is largely a resounding success.

MP3: CD: