The popular alternative rock band My Chemical Romance released their latest album aptly named The Black Parade last month. Press sheets quote lead vocalist Gerard Way as saying that this album is one of the most difficult for the four members: guitarists Ray Toro and Frank Lero, drummer Bob Bryar, and bass player and brother of Gerard, Mikey.
Way says that the band’s identity needed to be changed for what they produced to make this album, focusing on various themes of emotional relationships based on circumstances revolving around death.
It has a musical quality that feels like raw madness, but it is not hindered by such accompanying traits as overtly erratic patterns in song play or the growing detachment from broader emotions. The band is very aware of each track’s individual theme and condenses it to the level of power as an ultraviolet ray.
Two such tracks of the album, “The Sharpest Lives” and “House of Wolves,” are the most ecstatic and volatile of this thirteen track CD and are some of the best examples of its creatively amalgamated structure of human emotion, addictive vocals, and acute instrumental talent.
The title track, “The Black Parade,” was featured during the MTV Music Awards. It recounts the story of a young man reminiscing with his father at his deathbed of words shared with him during a family outing at a town parade before he passes on in peace.
This, and other album tracks such as “Cancer,” would be one of the few tracks that leave the listener feeling inspired and hopeful while still retaining the dark themes resounding through the rest of the album that draws so many of the conventional fan base of the alternative rock genre. Other tracks such as “MAMA” and “Sleep,” though having many creative sounds and raw energy, consist of cathartic anger and depression.
The Black Parade is loaded with a dynamic and contrasting variety that blends together like an expressionist painting of a world of surrealistic twilight. It’s available now.