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Tracklisting
1. The End
2. Dead
3. This Is How I Disappear
4. The Sharpest Lives
5. Welcome To The Black Parade
6. I Don't Love You
7. House Of Wolves
8. Cancer
9. Mama
10. Sleep
11. Disenchanted
12. Famous Last Words
13. Blood (Hidden)
How do you review a band that you love and not resort to shameless promotion and gushing? Simple, you strip the music down to it's barest of bones and stick to the facts. Fan-girl gushing aside, you would be hard-pressed to label My Chemical Romance as bad musicians and 'The Black Parade' is a testament to just how good they've become. The typical My Chemical Romance review would begin by lauding the musical achievements of the band, crediting them with brilliance and daring, and while this cannot be denied, before My Chemical Romance evolved into musical geniuses, they were still able to hit their audiences hard between the eyes lyrically.
There is an odd sense of mystery surrounding the explosion of fame that met My Chemical Romance with the release of 'Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge', and the explosion that followed the release of 'The Black Parade' was three times as grand, and ten times more mysterious. Now My Chemical Romance is mainstreamed rock (unless you want to rebut and call them emo - a term many of the fans will deny vehemently), played over all the radio stations and finding their place in the charts among Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado and Christina Aguilera, but the questions of why? and just how good is this band? remain.
The Black Parade is a work of genius - and this isn't the fan-girl speaking. Musically, it is rather stunning, hitting the listener hard between the ears with vocal tracks layered spectacularly and guitar parts that somehow manage to reach through the speakers and sweep the listener away on an adventure that is as stunning in the auditory sense, as it is in the visual - the pictures painted by the music arebreathtaking, harsh and honest, but the real genius of this record lies cradled between the notes in the lyrics and the story that Gerard Way slowly spins in a voice that is ridiculously flexible.
No one will refute the fact that 'The Black Parade' is an album that deals with death, in fact, this is made blatantly obvious by the band themselves when the opening track ends with the sound of a heart-monitor flat-lining. But this is death delivered with the intent to keep the listener alive. This is paradox at its very finest, My Chemical Romance have written an album that deals with death, but is essentially about life. At this point, the world might be sick and tired of hearing the 'this is a band that will save your life' motto that the members of My Chemical Romance seem to be brandishing around like a flag of dark triumph, however, there is a ridiculous amount of truth to this. With choruses that deliver chants such as "I am not afraid to keep on living" and "do or die, you'll never make me?we'll carry on" this record encourages it's listeners (who are mainly teenagers going through the various ups and downs of life) to hold on because really, while things will get messy and hard, giving up is most definitely not an option.
Musically, this album sets the band apart from the punk-rock and 'emo' crowd they were originally lumped with. Drawing noticeable influence from older, more classic rock, My Chemical Romance have attempted to shift the direction of modern rock and re-instate that time-old 'arena' feel. Obviously, not only have they succeeded in capturing that feeling in this record, but it managed to wow both fans and some of the most lemon-lipped of critics. Songs such as 'Sleep' and 'House of Wolves' create solid and impenetrable walls of sound while shedding emotion, anger and maybe just a little bit of desperation that audiences anywhere will have no problem relating to, or understanding. The heart-wrenching lyrics of 'I Don't Love You' bravely say what no one else will, especially when faced with a relationship that refuses to admit that it's dying, and 'Disenchanted' gives fans a very real look into the whirlwind emotions of the members of the band - emotions that have, for the most part, been kept well under wraps.
The crowning glory of this album is the completely unrestrained, totally off the wall 'Mama' which shamelessly flaunts a polka beat and breaks all the rules. But not only does it introduce it's audience to something they've never heard before, it's lack of any shame what-so-ever, and completely overblown quality forces its listeners to love it.
All in all, My Chemical Romance have truly outdone themselves this time around. They've created an album that will reach past the "you're a metal-head/I'm a punk-rock kid, and we hate emos" barrier and raise the bar for all music of their nearly unclassifiable genre in the years to come.
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