The Black Parade
by My Chemical Romance

From cestuneblague TOP 100 COMMENTER 08/08/2016 17:50 | #172504 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Yeah this album was inescapable sometime around '06-'07, and it's not hard to see why. In a time when so many bands were taking the previously more direct routes of emotive popish-y-punk songs, this album was so self-consciously grandstanding and BOMBASTIC (do you want me to repeat that last word) that it had the air of something new and important. It wasn't at all- it had the substance and danger of a Hot Topic halloween party with dime-store shrooms.

So what actually made the shoulda-been-a-trainwreck it worthwhile? Well... it was actually a lot of fun. Reviving the grand 'ol concept album formula, glam-rock poses and arena-metal that probably shoulda died with the early 80s, it apes every Big Fucking Band of the era- Iron Maiden, Supertramp, T. Rex, Danzig/Misfits, and hell there's even the Tom Waits bastard stepson of "Mama" (yes, that's Liza Minelli singing backup) but none so more than the undisputed kings of extravagant excess and Everything's Gotta Be An Anthem skin of Queen. The opener The End basically seems like the begginings of Ziggy Stardust and The Wall ran into each other, become one unholy monster walking away with blurred vision and a bloody nose. There's no way this album should've worked, but miraculously it did. Mainly cause it does mix solid songwriting with a sorta adorable sense of over-the-top surface grandeur that makes it a really entertaining spectacle, if rarely a substantive one. Not as strange or groundbreaking as it wanted to be, it nonetheless came across as a strong new millenium arena-rock album in spite of it's conspicious flaws. I may never enjoy it as much as I did when... I WAS..... A YOUNG BOYYYYYY!!!, but it's still fun to come back to once and again.

From dmercado 12/13/2013 09:43 | #97435 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This is definitely an improvement over Three Cheers. The songwriting has matured, and so has their sense of humor and knack for theatricality. This album takes a lot of cues from The Wall by Pink Floyd (the opener & Mama) which only adds to their repertoire of classic rock influences (Queen, Smiths). What really sets this album apart is the amount of ambition that went into the songwriting and the music - for a pop rock record, this one is as diverse in its sound and as thematically layered as American Idiot. And in many ways the two albums are similar - they were both fantastic closers to the pop punk and the emo punk subgenres, respectively.

The most campy and glammy concept album you'll probably ever hear. Fun listen and if Welcome to The Black Parade doesn't get you're blood pumping in the angst of teenage adrenaline then you're probably just as dead as the protagonist of this story.

It's an incredible album for a recent alternative rock band. I honestly don't see any reason to hate the album or the band.

Haters can go and eat broadbeans look smug and listen to Ok Computer on repeat till they relize why nobody likes them. (Edited)