My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
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Music Reviews of The Black Parade
Music Review: MaCabRe Matures in Sound
Rating: 4 Stars
Okay, first of all, I know you're all going, "Ugh... MCR, that emo pinup crap..."
So, now that you've gotten all that superficial moaning and groaning out of your system, listen.
I didn't think that Gerard Way and co. could do "epic," but they've actually somehow pulled it off with this album. I was looking for more of the same that I'd heard on Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear that MCR has really filled out their sound.
The Black Parade is also a concept album, much in the style of Reprise labelmate Green Day's American Idiot. It follows the protagonist through their death, and then past that too, in MCR's macabre fashion.
Their usual high energy returns on many songs on the album, such as the latter half of the grandiose "Welcome to the Black Parade," their premier single from the disc, as well as "This is How I Disappear" and "Dead!" However, their breadth of style has expanded as exemplified by the odd and quirky track "Mama," featuring guest vocals from Liza Minelli, of all people. There's also a hidden track, "Blood," with strangely vaudeville-style vocals from Way, whose vocal talents have been honed quite nicely with this album. You'll still get the soul-shredding shrieks from him in places on the record, just as you'd come to know from Three Cheers..., but accompanying it are expressive, playful vocal turns and mocking tones, and sometimes wistful and sorrowful expressions of regret.
There are smatterings of the influence of The Beatles and even more so, Queen, all over this album, as well as dirty smudges of prog rock thrown in at various points.
Overall, yes, this is My Chemical Romance. But this is a bigger, better, more poignant My Chemical Romance than you might be used to. In my opinion, The Black Parade is definitely worth checking out, even if you cocked a disapproving eyebrow at the band previously.
Music Review: A blemish to the facade of My Chemical Romance
Rating: 2 Stars
As an avid fan of My Chemical Romance, being a fan since 2003, much longer then most of their fans, I understand the quality of their music and this CD did not meet par as compared to the message that their other CD's carried. This CD was meant to be "dark" as the band has said, but it didn't capture what they wanted it to. Granted there are good songs on this album, but this CD has received too much popularity because of Gerard's physical changes then the quality of the CD. Most fans that like this CD don't even know that Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge isn't their first CD. If you want to hear them raw and what they are really about, listen to their first CD. I call it Bullets for short. It sounds a lot different than the Black Parade era, but if you adore MCR, you can appreciate its subtle uniqueness. It shows them struggling to become a band and I appreciate it for that. Revenge is probably my favorite not for looks or the songs, but for the message it carries. Revenge. It is a story about people being hurt by death and being psychologically messed up. It if anything let's you know that there are other people in the world who re not okay and that you are not alone. The Black Parade is good, but not the best it could be. I went to see them in concert and you could clearly tell that they had the most vigor in singing their older songs. And that is what MCR is about. Being alive, facing death and overcoming it. Getting through the bad to be better. I wish that people would stop making such a big deal out of the Black Parade when they don't know anything about MCR's history, or what they have gone through. If they understood the hardships they have gone through, they would view the Black Parade in a more realistic sense.
Listen to Demolition Lovers if you want to feel their pain. Listen to Cemetery Drive to feel the betrayal. Don't listen to Welcome to the Black Parade and think you understand them.
Music Review: Best Rock Album in years!!
Rating: 5 Stars
I am an old school rocker from the 70's who played in several bands. I was in Grand Funk and later Ramones cover band. 80's rock bands perfected sound quality but it felt like great rock was becoming a thing of the past. Country became mainstream. Rap pushed it's way in allowing singing out of key and talking fast to become someones idea of music. Other forms like screaming rock as if your possessed and wanna kill your family did nothing for me. I did like a few modern things that showed talent like Avril or Simple Plan. You had to look past all the clone bands like Daughtry and ignore who they told us was popular to find the good music. The only rock to hang onto was the old guys still creating and touring. Kiss, Aerosmith, REM, Rick Springfield, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi. They are all still writing and playing better than ever. They can't go on forever so who will lead the charge and keep real rock music alive? My Chemical Romance. My Chemical Romance is the most important band of this generation. They hit you with a sonic wall of sound featuring great playing and singing. Harmonies layered with screaming emotional angst and themes to relate to. Black Parade is one of the greatest albums of all time. They hinted at genius on their last album and went all out on this one. Sure any musician can tell overdubs were layered to produce the wall of sound. They went for a perfection most bands would never attempt on stage. Through sheer guts they did this album live on a world wide tour. Screaming their hearts out and playing furiously and powerfully to fill the voids that were overdubbed on the album. I saw the live show. They about killed themselves but they pulled it off. Why do you think they tried to kill it off with the Live album called The Black Parade Is Dead! It was a hard album to do live. Buy this piece of history. Musicians put on your headphones and learn something about the art from these guys.Music Review: Devastatingly Brilliant
Rating: 5 Stars
I spend most of my time listening to metal and 80's style AOR (Journey, Foreigner et al), so I probably have no business reviewing the latest release by My Chemical Romance. I had long since given up on most modern rock artists, but I was hearing enough good things about The Black Parade (plus I thought the band's Sergeant Pepper meets Tim Burton image was cool) that I took a chance and picked it up.
Dear God this album is brilliant.
Seriously, there is so much to love about The Black Parade, even if you can no longer identify 90% of what you hear on the radio. Besides being one of the catchiest albums I've ever heard, the band wraps elements of pop, punk, metal, and even arena rock (it's like throwing Green Day, Queen, Styx, the Who, and Bon Jovi in a blender) around a concept album about...ghosts? death? cancer? I still haven't figured out what it's all about, but I do know that I've owned it for the better part of a year and still can't go more than a few days without playing it. This is How I Disappear, a neck-snapping tune that's bound to please most metal fans, is by far my favorite song, but Famous Last Words is just as heavy, and songs like Dead and Welcome to the Black Parade are standouts as well. Really, the entire album is just about flawless. There's an incredible amount of energy and emotion at work here that is just impossible to deny. The fact that some of the same behind-the-scenes types that worked on Green Day's American Idiot (another favorite) also worked on The Black Parade is icing on the cake.
I have no idea what emo is, and my younger brothers laugh at me over this one, but I still think that The Black Parade is by far the best album I've heard since American Idiot. It's one of those rare albums that leaves you exhausted, gasping for breath, awestruck and reaching for the "play" button once it ends.
Music Review: The Warped Tour set's gateway drug to classic rock
Rating: 5 Stars
Ask any naysayer and they'll tell you My Chemical Romance sucks for one or more of the following reasons: a)they're all style and no substance, b)The Black Parade is contrived and unoriginal, c)they're mainstream sellouts, and d)they're marketed to teenaged girls. Yes, MCR have a penchant for wearing make-up and red ties, their new album draws influences from nearly a dozen classic rock icons, their ability to craft memorable choruses and hooks have landed them on the covers of coutless magazines while helping to propel their 2004 breakthrough Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge into the sales stratosphere, and yes, girls like them. While the Anti-MCR Brigade make many a valid argument against the princes of goth tinged post-hardcore, there is one thing not even the most vehemntly outspoken hater can refute: The Black Parade is one hell of a well-written record.
Boasting some of the most bombastic and energetic song structures ever devised by a band of the Warped Tour generation, MCR's latest effort showcases the group's previously unexplored high-level musical ability (listen to Ray Toro's blistering guitar solo on the Cheap Trick inspired Dead! and Gerard Way's Steppenwolf-esque croon on House of Wolves). Each of the album's fourteen songs (all of which are single quality) serve as Romance's interpretation of classic rock legends ranging from Pink Floyd (The End.), Queen (Welcome to the Black Parade), Aerosmith (I Don't Love You), and even Foghat (Teenagers). And to imagine that the shamelessly over the top power balladry of Disenchanted won't be playing at every suburban high school prom next year would be kidding yourself.
Explosively epic and well-written, The Black Parade is arguably one of the only soon to be platinum selling rock records this year truly deserving of the Grammy its almost sure to garner in 2007.