My Chemical Romance may be the oldest young band in America. On October 23, 2006 through Reprise Records, the members — singer Gerard Way, his brother and bassist Mikey, drummer Bob Bryar and guitarists Ray Toro and Frank Iero — released "The Black Parade," which marked the New Jersey group's third studio album. However, they wouldn't realize that what they put out that year was one of the best records of 2006, and a rabid, ingenious paraphrasing of echoes and kitsch from rock's golden age of bombast. Since this year marks the tenth anniversary of The Black Parade and MCR is releasing a massive reissue this week, it's time to visit this record and see if it had changed since its release.
The opening fanfare, "The End," blows up like an outtake from Alice Cooper's "Billion Dollar Babies," with glam-Godzilla guitars and spook-choir hurrahs. "Dead!" is a sleek, bleak bruiser, like Queen's "Keep Yourself Alive" in widow's weeds. And in the hyperoperatic "Mama," Gerard Way — playing a soldier up to his neck in blood, raging against the woman who gave him life — briefly duets with Liza Minnelli, who belts her two big lines only to have Way sing back at her with vicious obscenity. It is brassy casting, as if Minnelli has been dropped into a Glenn Danzig production of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children."
This album has some sort of a late 70s rock vibe to it, but the thing is that it came out in 2006, and My Chemical Romance are very much a band of their time — post-9/11. The first song Way wrote for the group (with ex-drummer Matt Pelisser) was "Skylines and Turnstiles," based on his experience that day in New York, watching the Twin Towers fall in front of him. There is a lot of fire and rubble in these songs, too. And there are bodies all over the place — dead in the streets ("Welcome to the Black Parade"); near death over love ("The Sharpest Lives"), in hospital beds ("Dead!" and "Cancer") or war ("The Ghost of You"); or just too numb to care about morality ("House of Wolves") or forgiveness ("I Don't Love You"). Starting with a riff that stabs and stutters like an old Buzzcocks lick and packing a bridge that is pure Iron Maiden, "This Is How I Disappear" is an exciting, perverse goodbye, from one lost soul to the object of his suffocating affection. "And without you is how I disappear/And live my life alone/Forever now," Way sings from the depths of obsession — and, it seems, his grave. The poetry is rickety, but the self-pity is arena-ready.
Next to that, My Chemical Romance's 2004 album, "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge," is orthodox buzz-saw misery. Apparently, the band now believes that if you're going to feel sorry for yourself, you might as well do it with gusto. "When I grow up, I want to be nothing at all!" Way wails in "The End." The excess comes with diminishing returns. Rob Cavallo, who recorded and produced this album with MCR, over-rely on the avenging-army drumroll shtick, and what is deliciously vintage for most of the record — Way's bright, breathless yelp, with harmonies stacked to eternity; the lightning bolts of Brian May and Mick Ronson cutting through Toro's and Iero's widescreen grind — loses luster by Tracks Twelve and Thirteen, "Disenchanted" and "Famous Last Words." The best last words should have been Track Eleven, "Teenagers," a tight fist of T. Rex-style crunch with a great punch-the-air chorus: "They said all teenagers scare the living sh** out of me."
Teenagers are the ones who should be scared. They are about to inherit a hell on this earth that is more terrifying, day by day, than anything Way imagines here. In fact, the most realistic and contemporary thing about this album's supercharged-Seventies Armageddon is his bitter, almost jealously guarded helplessness in nearly every song. Content to be the queen of complaint (and damn good at it too), My Chemical Romance offered no answers and give no hope — except for the shot of light that comes in the second manic half of "Welcome to the Black Parade," whenever Way hits the vocal hook. "We'll carry on," he sings repeatedly, at full rock-hero tilt. He doesn't say where. But the way he says it sounds great and worth believing, no matter how old you'll get.
As of August 25, 2007, the album has sold 1,169,697 copies in the U.S., "Welcome to the Black Parade" became the band's first and only top 10 single in the United States, Rolling Stone went on to rank "The Black Parade" No. 20 in its "Top 50 Albums of 2006" feature, some say it's as perfect as Green Day's American Idiot album, and "The Black Parade" debuted at number two in the United States on the Billboard 200 chart behind Hannah Montana... Really? Still, all that from a band that calls itself "Emo"? Honestly, you should give them a little more credit than they already had. Pick up "The Black Parade," put it on your CD player or iTunes account, slap the headphone on and enjoy the ride. One last bit of advice, however. When you get to the end of the last track "Famous Last Words", leave the CD going for a little while longer. You'll be glad you did.
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
