MCR's The Black Parade

I’m just going to put this quote out there. No need to discuss it: “…something that we had always wanted but were always missing…it helped us complete the sound we wanted to create.” Wait. Gerard, what are you talking about? Oh, the addition of keyboards on the new album, The Black Parade (Reprise). Excellent!

(J, I’m sorry that I won’t let your emphatic distaste of keyboards in hard rock ever die)

My Chemical Romance released their third album last week. I approached the release of this album very seriously. I purposely tried to stay away from reading any early reviews. This third album is something I have anticipated more than anything this year and it was important to me to not be clouded by other journalists’ opinions. If I listened to anyone it was the band itself who gave us fans a mock press conference in late August/ early September. That was all the information I needed.

As October 24th approached, I would occasionally worry myself about a couple of things. Firstly, I was worried that there would be too much of that Cabaret thing happening. I’m German. I love it. But bands like The Dresden Dolls and Panic! make me want to drown myself in guitar noodling and legends of groupies. My second concern was that this album would be too heavily conceptual for my taste. Not conceptual as in Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads where the collection of songs have a similar theme, but conceptual in that the artist is trying to tell you a story. When artists do this, there’s always a possibility that there could be a handful of good songs and then a handful of shitty songs that were meant to carry the story along. Who wants that?

MCR is no stranger to a concept album. Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge was loosely conceptual and considered the continuation of the last song on the band’s first album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. It had a story, but it could be summed up in one word: Revenge. That’s all that you had to remember when you listened to it. The Black Parade was not to be ‘loosely’ based on a story. Quite the opposite.

What I’m happy to report is that this cd is an excellent rock album, first and foremost. There is certainly a macabre cabaret thing going on and it is conceptual, but you know what, I fucking love it. So, my anxieties aside, let me tell you about my new favorite album, The Black Parade.

The motivation behind this album was the question “what if, when death comes for you, it somehow taps into your subconscious and transforms itself into your strongest, most cherished memory?” On this album you have the main protagonist, The Patient, who dies from cancer. His strongest memory is of a parade his father took him to when he was a child. So, death comes to The Patient in the form of a parade. He follows the parade to his ultimate fate, whatever afterlife there is. Along the way he meets a few characters, i.e., the twins Fear and Regret. It’s simple, relatable (in the ‘everything comes down to dying with me’ kind of way) beautiful, and so very MCR.

Like I said, this is a rock album, so let’s talk about the guitars. There are two guitarists in the band, Ray Toro and Frank Iero. Ray comes from the classic rock guitar side of the house while Frank comes from the punk power chord side of the house. The two mixed together create wonderfully energetic and fast-moving melodies. These two guys have been with the band since the beginning and I think without either one of them MCR would be incomplete. Besides Gerard’s performance, which is in itself something to behold live, it’s the marriage of these two guitar styles that make their music so kickass, in my opinion.

Another kickass element is the message of empowerment in each of their songs. I will tell you that no matter what age you are, you can’t help but be moved by the insistence that you will shine your brightest when you face your greatest fears and disappointments. This is what I loved on Three Cheers, and it’s abundant on the new album.

Let’s talk about the tracklisting. I’ll just discuss the ones that I love the most. Wait. That just happens to be all of them.

1. The End. This is a powerful opening to the album. The Patient welcomes you.

2. Dead! I love the flat line in the beginning. As I was reading the lyrics to this song I came across the lyric “During this operation Found a complication in your heart So long”. This has to be a reference to the operation during which Gerard’s grandma passed away due to complications. This event inspired the song Helena on Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, but we already know that.

3. This is How I Disappear. Towards the end of the Revenge tour Gerard developed a fascination with Houdini and the séances his wife would hold after he died. Some of the last pics that were published overseas towards the end of the tour were of the band hanging upside down in straight jackets. Gerard tells you in the liner notes that The Escape Artist is one of the characters the Patient meets on his journey.

4. The Sharpest Lives. There is a Bon Jovi element to this one which I’m really into!

5. Welcome to the Black Parade. I agree with J that the opening of this song could be cut short a little bit. However, once the song starts moving it’s awesome.

6. I Don’t Love You. I repeated this song four times when I first heard it. I love Ray’s guitar solo in this one.

7. House of Wolves. I think of Detroit twice. Can you guess why? I LOVE the power chords. Mikey’s bass playing comes through in this song. I’m looking forward to seeing the crowd go apeshit when this song is performed live.

8. Cancer is a song that Ray Toro felt was going to be too honest or literal for people to take (from the liner notes in the limited edition of the cd). This is a beautiful 2-minute ballad. If you have been touched by this disease, as J and I both have been, you will not hear this song easily, but do it. This is fucked up, but I listened to this song while I was putting on my face in preparation to go out. I cried so hard I had to wash my face and start over.

9. Mama. Gerard definitely has a fascination for the Macabre Cabaret of the German persuasion. Gerard sings in different voices in this song. LIZAAAAAAAAAAAAA with a Z makes an appearance on this song. Brilliant.

10. Sleep. Wonderfully ambient in some parts and hard in others. Very nice.

11. Teenagers. This is a very different sound for them. I live for Gerard yelling “AWDAGETHA NOW!!” towards the end. Hilarious.

12. Disenchanted. It took me just a few seconds to realize what I was hearing. When they performed a “new” song called Shut Up and Play during their show at the Pageant in September 2005, I remember thinking “Air Supply”. I liked it, but it was quite a departure. Shortly after that performance, a fellow fan in the UK sent me a shared file of that song performed live overseas. Shut Up and Play was in my larger than life MCR playlist for a long time until one fateful day my laptop crashed and I hadn’t backed up in time (won’t do that again). Anyway, now I have it again but in its finished form and with its new title, Disenchanted. AND it doesn’t sound so Air Supply anymore.

13. Famous Last Words. There’s just a hint of noodling in this song! Great song to end the album with. This song is considered the sister song of Sleep.

There is a track 14, but it’s hidden. Let the cd player play on in its silence for about 1m 30s and you’ll hear an interesting cabaret song that showcases Gerard and his dark humor. Quite the little gem.

For the fans that can afford it, get the special limited edition for the photography and sketches, the commentary, and the written diary.

It’s no secret how much I love this band. The Judakris picture on this website is a sketch of us at the Oasis show in 2005 during which I met Gerard for the first time. K is the one on the right of picture, distracted by the lovely man in black sitting down to her left during most of the show. It was a completely serendipitous and lovely experience that I wrote about in an earlier post entitled “In the Beginning, There Was Oasis…” In that post I also write about the drive back to St. Louis, during which a line of tour buses carrying MCR and a bunch of other bands to our hometown Warped show stayed alongside us much of the way. The memory of that night is one that I will never forget. If, according to this album, death taps into your subconscious and transforms itself into one of your strongest and/or cherished memories then when I’ve reached my end of days, I’ll wait for the line of tour buses to guide me down the highway to see an MCR show for one last time. Well done, boys. I give this one an Unbelievable. XOXO -K