The Black Parade
My Chemical Romance approach death with an unusual amount of enthusiasm on The Black Parade. The record contains fear, grief and self-disgust, but the performances are too lively to let those subjects become one long dark pose. The band use theatrical arrangements to make the emotions larger and, surprisingly often, easier to understand.
The End. acts like a curtain rising before Dead! pushes the album into motion. The second song's bright lead guitar and escalating hooks establish a useful contradiction: the subject is bleak, yet the band sound thrilled by what the music can do. Gerard Way's dramatic delivery belongs inside that contradiction.
Welcome to the Black Parade gives the ambition its clearest form. The piano opening makes a small, recognisable beginning, and the following sections keep expanding the scale without abandoning the central tune. Its grand finish feels connected to everything that came before. The song earns its theatricality through construction as much as volume.
The variety is important. Cancer reduces the setting to a much more exposed account of illness, while Mama turns dread into a strange, dark performance with a guest appearance from Liza Minnelli. Teenagers is simpler and more rhythmically blunt, giving the album a welcome change in character. The band are good at recognising when a straightforward riff can do what another elaborate arrangement cannot.
The production sometimes works against that range. The dense, bright guitar sound makes several of the faster songs seem more alike than their individual parts suggest. There are also moments when Way's insistence leaves little room for the listener to decide how strongly to feel.
Disenchanted offers a more patient kind of disappointment, and Famous Last Words turns the closing stretch towards defiance. The loose story of a dying patient matters less than that movement between vulnerability and resolve. The Black Parade is most successful when its costumes and large gestures lead back to an ordinary human fear. Enough of these songs do exactly that to make the spectacle worth believing in.
