My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade ALBUM REVIEW

hi everyone 7th inning out of 10 tan oh here the Internet's busiest music nerd and it's time for a review of the classic cuz it's a classic review of My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade this is the seminal 2006 album from Newark New Jersey band My Chemical Romance the mid-2000s they were an interesting time for music to say the least I lived it I was there and maybe this is a side of me getting old but I I can't help but feel like things were just simpler back then things just made more sense on the internet when all you had to worry about was your myspace top eight but simultaneously it is not a time that I would want to go back to George Bush president internet porn takes forever to download and you can't listen to Death Grips yet no thank you and while genres like pop punk and emo were certainly at their peak of popularity I personally at the time didn't feel like they were at their peak of creativity don't get me wrong at the time MCR was an amazing breath of fresh air when the exhilarating three cheers for Sweet Revenge came out it was like a bomb going off okay but for every MC our we had there were like 10 more bands trying to be the next simple plan or Taking Back Sunday and back then it's not like there weren't tons of new or contemporary bands that I liked white stripes strokes bright eyes against me blood brothers death from above 1979 Modest Mouse most of the rock I listen to that was an old-school Punk was oriented around Indy post hardcore metalcore and even though I grew up loving the power pop and pop punk of the 90s the more commercially successful records in these genres in the 2000s were just a turn-off for me they sounded melodramatic overblown formulaic not nearly as fun catchy or chock full of personality as enema of the state or Dookie so by the time three cheers came out in four this was a trend I was already absolutely sick of which is why I was surprised when I came across three chairs working at my college radio station and thought it was kind of good despite typically disliked anything at the time that had an album cover that looked anything like this but seriously here's a record that could go blow-for-blow with any other pop punk or emo album out at the time in terms of volume vocal dramatics and yet the singing is actually great the songs are addictive in the vibe is genuinely dark and kind of edgy I'm down or at least I was in a somewhat quiet way because you know as a self-conscious twenty-something who thought he was into more artsy meaningful music and still had things like guilty pleasures I didn't spend nearly enough time openly praising this record as I should have and over the years three cheers has in my opinion aged amazingly even though the black parade is perceived to be the bigger and more ambitious record in many respects three cheers is just as good but for a band of MC ours obvious talent staying simply within the confines of pop punk or emo was going to be an impossibility their ambitions on their next record would drive them to a higher calling writing and Co producing an album that would be a contribution to the hallowed halls of rock opera well-respected but rarely attempted rock operas can be pretty tricky and risky and there are some ways in which the black parade famously doesn't live up to the grand expectations of the genre there are cuts where the instrumentation just isn't lavish or epic enough the narrative and general message of the LP is not really all that linear or clear some of the time though there are certainly consistent themes of death illness cancer bravely facing down or accepting the end of your life so even though there are great tracks here that reinforce those ideas there are others that detour into something only tangentially related whether that be living recklessly or having an irrational fear of teenagers so while the BlackBerry may not be as focused narrative Lee as a the wall or Bat Out of Hell or Tommy the Black Parade is still pretty grand in presentation theatrical as well especially given the Cabaret influence dictating the sound of cuts like mama or the bonus track blood so the black parades embrace of opera might mostly just be for esthetic purposes but no harm no foul because it just adds to the entertainment value of the album as does the band's embrace of glam rock or hard rock on some tracks here too if anything should be celebrated on this album it's how the band creatively crosses over between the melodrama of emo and the melodrama of so many strains of rock to come before it that and how punchy and infectious much of this record is the whole thing kicks off with the campy but gratifying the end the Bowie influence on this track is heavy as hell the pronounced acoustic guitar strumming along with the singing that sounds like something out of a theatre production then an explosion of soaring guitar harmonies touches of piano to a gargantuan passage where we get all of these huge deeply layered vocal harmonies which are really one of the biggest selling points of the record we get a flawless transition into the track dead which is aided by a flatline of an EKG punchy crunchy jaunty guitar chords it's a really fun and lively track the band is just really yucking it up on this song with these squawking guitar soloing some of these shredding - it's a stark contrast from the incredibly grim lyrics where our very ill patient character is being told they have two weeks left to live which again bold juxtaposition going on here between the lyrics and the music but emo and punk have a long history of turning negatives into energetic and rowdy music following the same storyline the vibe turns absolutely sinister on the track how I disappear where the lyrics not only equate death with the erasure of someone's memory their personhood but also we have the idea being toyed with of talking to someone that you love in a seance from beyond the grave trying to make a romantic connection while there I guess a ghost a specter it's a great song but once again it's the pumping pop punk guitars and the soaring vocal harmonies that really sell it the dark goth Punk edge of this record only intensifies on the sharpest lives but it's welcome to The Black Parade that's really the crown jewel of the first leg of the record the iconic descending lonely piano line that kicks the song off with Gerard Way singing theatrically about the recollection of a childhood memory seeing a marching band the Black Parade which is obviously metaphorical for some kind of transition into death when I was a young boy my father the hook on this track seems to be antithetical to some of the messaging on how I disappear though because this track is very much about someone's memory lasting and living on after death keep in mind at the point we're hearing this the guitars the instrumentation have gone completely pop-punk and the way we transition out of this into more queen inspired guitar soloing marching drums vocal harmonies it's it's pure fireworks we then get to heart-wrenching slow-jam I don't love you a tragic tension release considering all of the lavish and throttling pop punk tunes that brought us to this point the variety and the tracklist here continues on to house of wolves that feature some grimy distorted walking bass as well as some tom heavy drums that both sound like something out of like a jazz song these passages transition tightly into these synced up guitar chords and drums but that pretty much sound like something out of the KISS playbook at this point everything MCR is doing is just an impressive juggling act with all the ideas they're working into this very menacing and grim brand of pop punk then with the track cancer we get a quality piano ballad with some rich vocal harmonies and strings that feel like some Beatles baroque pop worship on the back end the biggest impact on this track though go to the lyrics which are unapologetic as well as brutal talking about how our protagonist is never going to marry how they are counting down their days they're soggy from the chemo we then transitions suddenly into something a bit zanier on the track mama with its Oompa drum beats and Eastern Bloc melodies what the band is doing on this track doesn't sound too much unlike the gypsy punk sounds that groups such as Gogol Bordello would popularize just a year earlier not to mention there's no one group singularly that brought these cabaret and folksy sounds into the genre anyway I mean look at early Dresden Dolls or flogging.molly I will say though with this track MCR easily has one of the more entertaining takes on this fusion especially considering they went all out with a general liza minnelli feature that still sounds to this day absolutely insane the band kind of eases up on the speed with the track sleep to create a thunderous interpretation of alternative rock the overabundance of bass and reverb and and searing screams on this track leaves our protagonist feeling like they're slipping down into an impenetrable dark abyss and considering some of the tracks final refrains of just sleep just sleep just sleep that's pretty much the case the song teenagers is a somewhat funny detour in the tracklist that I alluded to earlier in the review it doesn't seem to reinforce much of anything else narrative lis on the album but still I would say the song was absolutely necessary for the time considering the band's very young fanbase the track lyrically addresses an overabundance of fear and worry societally about teenagers at large kind of mocking the attitude with these over exaggerated rock-and-roll riffs and shouty sing-along choruses it sort of puts the idea of trying to control the next generations feelings and thoughts to get them to comply with everything previous generations want into perspective as prior to this we worried about hippies and hippie culture ruining teenagers as well as heavy-metal and gangster rap and emo and now social media and all this other [ __ ] at this point we're nearing the end of the album we get another very narrative heavy power ballad with disenchanted it's easily one of the most crushing moments on the album with our protagonist pretty much coming to the conclusion that their death is meaningless and the life they led up until this point doesn't really mean much either I would say there's a lot of snark on the chorus talking about how it's it's just a sad song that we're listening to with nothing to say it's hard to tell if the track is a commentary on the character and their feelings about death or the act of writing a sad song about something in general but what is clear in the verses is that our main character again is not all that impressed with their existence up until this point I spent my high school career spit on and shoved to agree so I could watch all my heroes sell a car on TV bring out the old guillotine will show them what we all mean I guess when writing and sequencing the album the band didn't necessarily want to end things off on such a dreary and maybe nihilistic note with the quickness the narrative of this record changes up with the last full song famous last words which is a righteous rock song about pushing forward overcoming persevering I mean it feels great it's a great attitude it's well written it's well produced but I have to say the lyrics aren't nearly as specific as they are on the dreary er cuts here maybe that has to do with I don't know the attitude of not wanting to dwell on the negative but I think the sudden emotional shift that we see at this point on the album can be pretty representative of when you're dealing with things like depression or anxiety all some people can truly do is do their best to survive their emotional highs and lows their demons and even though much of this album is portrayed as being about a patient with a terminal illness it's also really just about that so overall Black Parade great album classic album the performance songwriting production style narrative even if it is choppy are all really great despite what flaws it has this thing still manages to sit around the peak of modern pop punk I highly recommend it I encourage anyone who loves it to go back and love it again anyone who hasn't heard this record before I give it a try with everything I have said in mind that is it transition have you given this album a listen did you love it did you hate it what would you radiate you're the best you're the best which a Nayar view next hit the like if you liked please subscribe and please don't cry hit the Bella's well over here next to my head is another video that you should check out hit that up or the link to subscribe to the channel Anthony Fantana MC our black parade forever

Channel: theneedledrop

Views: 1,039,886

Keywords: album, review, music, reviews, indie, underground, new, latest, lyrics, full song, listen, track, concert, live, performance, update, the needle drop, anthony fantano, vlog, talk, discussion, music nerd, my chemical romance, mcr, black parade, rock, punk, pop, emo, rock opera, classic, gerard way, three cheers, cabaret, teenagers, famous last words

Id: TIVqhJuE1sY

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 07 2020