THE BLACK PARADE
My Chemical Romance
2006

Maybe the second “new” album I actually listened to by my own choice (after Green Day’s American Idiot a couple years prior,) The Black Parade appealed directly to my classic rock-ist sensibilities, to my nerdy teenage angst, and to my taste in the women who also liked the album. At the time of release, critics quickly compared it to the bombast and pop art classicism of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I liked that as a dork who thought The Beatles were the greatest band in the world and who kept Queen’s Greatest Hits compilation in the rotation for four straight years of high school.

But, to be honest, I’m not sure that comparison actually means anything other than “Welcome to the Black Parade” being anthemic and dramatizing the parade. It’s not that these bands aren’t part of My Chemical Romance’s DNA – if anything, their most Beatles-y song is “I’m Not Okay (I Promise,)” a mall goth perversion of “She Loves You” that steals the “Yeah, yeah, yeahs” for its own chorus. The melodic guitar solos of Ray Toro certainly sometimes bear comparison to Brian May’s for Queen, especially on songs like “I Don’t Love You” and “Dead!” Anyone who was claiming “rock was dead” in the 2000s just didn’t like the aesthetics, because the musicianship was obviously still carried forward.

But those comparisons are, based on my own teen self, an attempt to separate My Chemical Romance out of the pop emo they came from, to elevate them out of their subculture. The Black Parade album is, for the most part, a sibling to Fueled by Ramen’s roster, just as glossy and carefully written, just as poppy and pleasant. A song like “This Is How I Disappear” is just a perfect pop song, harmonic and huge, danceable and soaring in the chorus. These songs musically slip perfectly into emo night alongside Paramore, Fall Out Boy, and Panic! At The Disco songs of this era.

But unlike those songs, Gerard Way has a project, and that project is grief. This album’s lyrical content and vocal delivery are what separate the ambition of The Black Parade, generally understood as a rock opera (complete with two almost-showtunes in “The End” and “Mama”) about a dying man looking at his life and disease. But it’s a messy one, not nearly as plotty as rock operas like Tommy or The Wall, and the songs are allowed to operate mostly independently. Again, this feels like an overemphasis on appeals to classic rock authority rather than allowing it to exist as a more modern concept album, just a collection of meditations on a theme. The teen fans of message boards and Tumblr accelerate this from another direction, the desire for lore and OCs as sources for fanart. To be fair, “The Patient” as a character wasn’t invented by critics or fans, but by Way himself, who before My Chem was a comics writer. I think it’s telling, though, that his narrative structure here is so different from his comics work, not even so much episodic as epigraphic. 

Coming back to it as an adult, though, I’m just so taken with the musicianship. The band identified their time at the Paramour Mansion composing and recording the album as a troubled one both creatively and mentally, but you wouldn’t know it from the harmonic interplay throughout the album. A song like “House of Wolves” really highlights how the moment Bob Bryer’s drumming needs to be showier, everyone else is happy to pull back and serve the rhythm. A song like “The Sharpest Lives” feels like the entire band is one instrument, a sonic wall behind Way’s vocal. When Toro and Iero come together for the “Dead!” solo, it’s a firestarter, and over just as soon as it starts. This is a band that has come together to serve Way’s great songs, and everybody gets a chance to shine. While Danger Days was always a perfectly fun follow-up, this remains their peak of consistency and ambition. I’m glad they’re back touring again, but I almost would rather remember them here.

KEY TRACKS: “Welcome to the Black Parade,” “Sleep,” “Famous Last Words”
CATALOG CHOICE: Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge
NEXT STOP: From Under The Cork Tree, Fall Out Boy
AFTER THAT: Sam’s Town, The Killers