The Daily Mail says they're a threat to society. Rival bands say they're dangerous. Are My Chemical Romance really as evil as all that? Alexis Petridis finds out

 

On a wet Wednesday morning, four black-clad teenage girls sit on a wall in Shepherds Bush, staring at the entrance of the sleek boutique hotel where My Chemical Romance are staying. The girls wear determined expressions and the kind of eye make-up that looks like it has been applied while wearing oven gloves. Occasionally, one of them gingerly makes her way across the road and into the hotel lobby. Once there, she nonchalantly attempts to blend into her surroundings. Within seconds, a member of staff gently ushers her back into the rain. With meek, good-humoured resignation, she returns to the wall. A few minutes later, the process starts again.

These are the "emos", the pop-culture tribe recently outed by the Daily Mail as the Dangerous Teen Cult of Self-Harm, a menace to the nation devoted to black hair dye, My Chemical Romance and cutting themselves. Watching them plan their umpteenth timid assault on the hotel's revolving door, they don't look much like a terrifying youth death cult. Someone probably said the same thing about the Manson family just before they set out for Sharon Tate's mansion; none the less, it's hard to work out precisely how severe a threat is posed to society by a few girls who can't even outfox a hotel receptionist.

 

 

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In a suite several storeys away, My Chemical Romance are inclined to agree. The band's five members make unlikely candidates for leadership of a Dangerous Teen Cult, but they also make unlikely candidates for global rock superstars, which they are in the process of becoming: their record company is confidently predicting sales of 10m for their third album, The Black Parade. Intelligent, disarmingly frank and extremely polite, frontman Gerard Way speaks with the kind of nasal, blue-collar New Jersey accent that, for Britons with a certain taste in cinema, immediately evokes a shadowy world of wiseguys and made men ("Our new album," he says, "right away hadda punch ya and shake the $h!t oudda ya"). But this rather belies his nerdy previous career as an unsuccessful comic book illustrator, who was spurred to form My Chemical Romance by 9/11. He is handsome, but not in the angular way of the rock frontman: between the curious silver dye-job and the military jacket lurks a rather wholesome, apple-pie face.

By contrast, his brother, bassist Mikey, looks every inch the stuff of middle America's post-Columbine nightmares: his dyed black hair plastered to his head, his eyes ringed with kohl, his skinny frame swathed in a black leather trenchcoat.

 

Guitarist Frank Iero wears the male emo uniform - tight black jeans, dyed black hair swept over one eye, pierced lip, tattoos - but his fellow guitarist Ray Toro gives the appearance of having been parachuted in from an entirely different band at short notice: his hair is long and frizzy, his expression permanently set to mild bemusement. Jazz-trained drummer Bob Bryar bears more than a passing resemblance to Elbow frontman Guy Garvey. Iero suggests that their peculiar appearance may have something to do with their popularity among adolescents: "They're not ****ing ashamed of who they are any more because this cool band came out that is ****ing retarded and ashamed and awkward like me, so maybe being retarded and ashamed and awkward is not a bad thing."

 

"I'm surprised a newspaper thought we were such a threat that they had to write a whole article about us and our fans, calling them a death cult," frowns Gerard Way. His brother wearily points out that we have been here before. "In the 1980s, people thought Judas Priest was promoting suicide," he sighs. "They were like, Dee Snider from Twisted Sister? Dude's in league with the devil, man!"

 

In addition, they claim not to be an emo band at all: "We're so opposed to it because when we started out there were emo bands all around and we stuck out as not being emo," complains Gerard. "What that translated to is that we couldn't get booked up for shows, no one would take us on tour with them apart from Christian metal bands. We didn't get any of the benefits of being an emo band, our influences didn't come from emo. We just became emo by default, because we became one of the biggest bands from that scene." He quickly corrects himself: "That we weren't even a part of."

 

You could argue that Way's protestations are par for the course. Since time immemorial, every band self-evidently at the forefront of a musical sub-genre has loudly announced they have absolutely nothing to do with said musical sub-genre, fearful of being swept aside when fashions change. But My Chemical Romance have a stronger case than most, largely because no one seems to have a clue what emo is. It is the business of new movements in youth culture to baffle older onlookers, but emo seems to have gone one stage further, and baffled its actual participants. According to Kerrang! editor Paul Brannigan, the movement's torturous, bewildering history, populated by artists who made no commercial headway in the UK at all, is part of emo's teen appeal. "People's parents are listening to the Kooks and Franz Ferdinand or the Arctic Monkeys," he reasons. "The Arctic Monkeys aren't going to scare off people who like The Kinks and The Jam, but emo, the older generation don't really understand it. They've never heard of any of the bands that were influential, that came before My Chemical Romance. It's something kids can completely call their own."

 

The "emo" name has been lurking in the US punk underground for 20 years. First, it was shorthand for the "emotional hardcore" plied by mid-1980s Washington DC combos Rites of Spring and Embrace. A decade on, it was used to describe the tuneful, angst-ridden punk-pop of Sunny Day Real Estate, Thursday and Jimmy Eat World. Now it has been appended to My Chemical Romance. The case for the prosecution includes Iero's appearance, their debut beingproduced by a member of Thursday, and the band members' openness about their mental-health issues. One unnamed member apparently suffered a nervous breakdown during the recording of The Black Parade, while Gerard Way's punishing intake of alcohol, cocaine and anti-anxiety drug Xanax - long since abandoned - caused him to become suicidally depressed: "Let me put it this way, I went on tour to Japan and I didn't pack anything because I thought I wasn't coming back."

 

The case for the defence would note that The Black Parade has absolutely nothing in common musically with Rites Of Spring or Sunny Day Real Estate. A florid concept album about a thirtysomething cancer victim, it variously recalls Pink Floyd's The Wall, T Rex, the tormented oompah of Kurt Weill, Queen and, most unlikely of all, Oasis. It is so deliciously, unrepentantly over the top that when Liza Minnelli makes an unexpected guest appearance on a track called Mama, it barely causes the listener to raise an eyebrow.

 

Despite all this, the Daily Mail's article has proved hard to ignore. That's partly because it was so shrill and barmy: the last time the Mail got this worked up about a bunch of black-clad youths, they were marching through London's East End with Oswald Mosley and the paper was encouraging readers to join them. But it's also because it seems to have played a substantial role in catapulting My Chemical Romance to stardom in the UK, suddenly lending them the kind of anti-establishment credentials your average adolescent finds profoundly appealing. Previously, the New Jersey quintet had gained a strong following through constant touring - "we'd play shows with hardcore bands or indie rock bands, and you'd see four dudes in the audience dressed in black and wearing eyeliner, looking awkward," says Mikey Way, "then, as the years went by, every show of every band was full of those kids, it was like a chain letter". But since the Mail article, they have rocketed into the singles chart at No 1, a feat The Black Parade is expected to match this Sunday.

 

The other factor in My Chemical Romance's rise to mainstream stardom seems to have been their appearance at this year's Reading Festival. Plenty of artists have sealed their elevation to the big time via a triumphant summer festival appearance, but My Chemical Romance stole the show at Reading by the unlikely expedient of having bottles thrown at them by disgruntled fans of metal band Slayer, who preceded them on the bill. The Slayer fans were either provoked by My Chemical Romance's music, or Gerard Way's frenetic, mincing stage manner ("right from when we started," says Iero phlegmatically, "people have yelled 'fags' at us"), or the youth of their fanbase. Either way, the column inches most expected to go the Arctic Monkeys or Muse went their way. The hype was increased when fellow alt-rockers Kasabian and the Killers' Brandon Flowers dismissed them in terms your average 14-year-old is likely to find irresistible: the former called them "dark and weird", the latter "dangerous".

 

Mention of the Reading performance evokes mixed emotions. Iero claims he thought the incident "ruled", but still seems a bit angry - "we have more heart in one ****in' bead of sweat than most of those people have in their entire bodies". Gerard Way seems positively delighted: "That was our greatest victory as a show," he smiles. "This band was always about facing adversity. We got bottled for being dangerous. We oppose everything that's conventional about rock'n'roll in this country, our home country, everywhere in the world. That weekend, kids were getting beat up in the audience, the guys on stage were getting beat up, and we got through it, just like the kids got through it."

 

The next day, the kids are much in evidence when My Chemical Romance play a brief set at London's Virgin Megastore. A couple of game parents aside, the audience is almost exclusively under 18 and predominantly female. They maintain an atmosphere of complete hysteria for more than three hours. Long before the band come on, they are screaming, rocking the crash barriers and bellowing along to The Black Parade, which blares incessantly over the in-store PA. By the time My Chemical Romance actually appear, limp bodies are being picked out of the crush. A dazed-looking eight-year-old boy staggers from the crowd in the company of what looks like his older sister: "I think he's going to be sick," she explains, apologetically to a concerned Megastore employee. The sense that something is happening, that the cosy, all-ages-welcome consensus culture that has dominated rock music since Britpop is - for the moment at least - being youthfully shaken, is unmistakeable and undeniably thrilling.

 

After they play, My Chemical Romance appear for a signing session. A girl in a T-shirt that reads "My Chemical Romance saved my life" starts hyperventilating. Another staggers away from the table clutching her signed single, then bursts into tears in the arms of a nearby adult: a member of the Dangerous Teen Cult of Self-Harm, being cuddled by her mum.

 

· The Black Parade is out now on Reprise

Like Marilyn Manson beforehand - I find them totally offensive because their music & image is all hype & very little substance & it angers me with our culture, that 13/14 year olds fall for this sh1t, while fuddy duddy Tory papers get outraged by the movement's contrived image. All the while the band are getting richer & richer whilst encouraging vulnerable people that it is OK to self harm (or in extreme cases) commit suicide.

 

The fact that the likes of Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Paul Weller, Peter Hook (New Order), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Nirvana), Kasabian, the Kaiser Chiefs to name a few have (rightly) attacked acts of this genre for regarding the likes of Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, Richie Edwards (Manic Street Preachers) & Ian Curtis (Joy Division) as role models - all whom committed suicide is ever so wrong.

 

Listen to MCR's music - they are a blatant inferior rip off of the brilliant Smashing Pumpkins with a bit of rubbish Sum 41/Blink 182 thrown into the mix along with Meat Loaf/Queen/ELP "pomp rock".

 

I cannot stand the music of Fall Out Boy, AFI, Panic! At The Disco, My Chemical Romance, Funeral For A Friend. When most of these acts members go to speak, I want to punch them. To think in the 1980s I quite like Fugazi & I loved a lot of the 1980s Goth music that these current acts site as a major influence.

 

If you want to listen to some proper "Emotional Rock music" try Black Sabbath - Paranoid, Led Zeppelin - Four Symbols, Pink Floyd - The Wall, Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures, Nirvana - In Utero, Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible or Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness, not some whiny sh1t by some dumb American mummies boys.

 

Emo has to be the worst musical phenonemom ever. :arrr:

Like Marilyn Manson beforehand - I find them totally offensive because their music & image is all hype & very little substance & it angers me with our culture, that 13/14 year olds fall for this sh1t, while fuddy duddy Tory papers get outraged by the movement's contrived image. All the while the band are getting richer & richer whilst encouraging vulnerable people that it is OK to self harm (or in extreme cases) commit suicide.

 

you dont like Marilyn Manson? even in his more recent phase?

Like Marilyn Manson beforehand - I find them totally offensive because their music & image is all hype & very little substance & it angers me with our culture, that 13/14 year olds fall for this sh1t, while fuddy duddy Tory papers get outraged by the movement's contrived image. All the while the band are getting richer & richer whilst encouraging vulnerable people that it is OK to self harm (or in extreme cases) commit suicide.

 

The fact that the likes of Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Paul Weller, Peter Hook (New Order), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Nirvana), Kasabian, the Kaiser Chiefs to name a few have (rightly) attacked acts of this genre for regarding the likes of Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith, Richie Edwards (Manic Street Preachers) & Ian Curtis (Joy Division) as role models - all whom committed suicide is ever so wrong.

 

Listen to MCR's music - they are a blatant inferior rip off of the brilliant Smashing Pumpkins with a bit of rubbish Sum 41/Blink 182 thrown into the mix along with Meat Loaf/Queen/ELP "pomp rock".

 

I cannot stand the music of Fall Out Boy, AFI, Panic! At The Disco, My Chemical Romance, Funeral For A Friend. When most of these acts members go to speak, I want to punch them. To think in the 1980s I quite like Fugazi & I loved a lot of the 1980s Goth music that these current acts site as a major influence.

 

If you want to listen to some proper "Emotional Rock music" try Black Sabbath - Paranoid, Led Zeppelin - Four Symbols, Pink Floyd - The Wall, Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures, Nirvana - In Utero, Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible or Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness, not some whiny sh1t by some dumb American mummies boys.

 

Emo has to be the worst musical phenonemom ever. :arrr:

 

I broadly agree with that, but you cant really tar Manson with that brush mate, his early stuff does have substance to it... He's a very intelligent, articulate man, he doesn't get credit for that...

 

And it kinda depends on the reasons that people have for considering Cobain, Smith or Curtis as role models, in terms of them as artists, I see nothing wrong in being influenced by them, they wrote utterly compelling music, but if you're talking about finding them role models because they committed suicide then that's pretty fukked-up....

 

I dont consider MCR as being menaces to society, they're a bunch of pussies frankly.... It's typical for The Daily Mail to go OTT...

 

ooo I like marilyn manson ^_^

I'm not too fond of Marilyn Manson, to me they focus way too much on their image and the music has very little substance. Although I really like one of their songs a lot - Disposable Teens.

 

As for MCR, overrated rubbish IMO. I only liked 'I'm Not Okay' by them.

I can't be bothered to read all that, but I love MCR and Marilyn Manson ^_^

 

As far as I'm concerned that article's a load of old guff.

Edited October 28, 200618 yr by x-The_Royston_Poisoner-x

i wouldnt take any heed of the article either they make great music and thats enough for me cudnt care about the image etc

 

As far as I'm concerned that article's a load of old guff.

 

Oh it is, utter bollox... People do NOT self-harm because of a sodding record ffs!!!! I remember similar absolutely ridiculous claims in the 80s made by parents who said their kids killed themselves because of listening to Ozzy Ozbourne and Judas Priest records (and let's face it, both of these acts are either viewed as utter jokes or held in rather camp regard now...). This is NOTHING new, self-harming has gone on for bloody donkeys ages, it is down purely to a combination of bad parenting and schools just not giving two fukks if kids are being bullied or not...

 

I get very suspicious of newspapers and politicians who try to ascribe society's ills upon recording artists.... <_<

Oh it is, utter bollox... People do NOT self-harm because of a sodding record ffs!!!! I remember similar absolutely ridiculous claims in the 80s made by parents who said their kids killed themselves because of listening to Ozzy Ozbourne and Judas Priest records (and let's face it, both of these acts are either viewed as utter jokes or held in rather camp regard now...). This is NOTHING new, self-harming has gone on for bloody donkeys ages, it is down purely to a combination of bad parenting and schools just not giving two fukks if kids are being bullied or not...

 

I get very suspicious of newspapers and politicians who try to ascribe society's ills upon recording artists.... <_<

 

Exactly! There seems to be a lot of fuss made over MCR recently, I don't see why. They're not even emo tbh. God knows what that article is trying to make the fans sound like. There's around 14,000 members on the MCR forum I go on that would be very angry if they read that article. They're such a nice band, if you don't like them fair enough but there's no need to make threads about them calling them a 'threat'. The papers are just trying to make something out of nothing, like they always do.

 

''All the while the band are getting richer & richer whilst encouraging vulnerable people that it is OK to self harm (or in extreme cases) commit suicide.''

thisispop that is rubbish! I've got 4 Marilyn Manson albums (all except Golden Age Of Grotesque) and their music is good, and they don't encourage that at all :mellow: . People just get put off by the image.

I wouldn't expect you to like Fall Out Boy/Panic! At The Disco either, even I don't anymore and I'm only 17.

Edited October 28, 200618 yr by x-The_Royston_Poisoner-x

i wouldnt take any heed of the article either they make great music and thats enough for me cudnt care about the image etc

 

Good ^_^ That's exactly how I feel.

Exactly! There seems to be a lot of fuss made over MCR recently, I don't see why. They're not even emo tbh. God knows what that article is trying to make the fans sound like. There's around 14,000 members on the MCR forum I go on that would be very angry if they read that article. They're such a nice band, if you don't like them fair enough but there's no need to make threads about them calling them a 'threat'. The papers are just trying to make something out of nothing, like they always do.

 

''All the while the band are getting richer & richer whilst encouraging vulnerable people that it is OK to self harm (or in extreme cases) commit suicide.''

thisispop that is rubbish! I've got 4 Marilyn Manson albums (all except Golden Age Of Grotesque) and their music is good, and they don't encourage that at all :mellow: . People just get put off by the image.

I wouldn't expect you to like Fall Out Boy/Panic! At The Disco either, even I don't anymore and I'm only 17.

 

I dont think that Tigerboy was making any kind of judgemental statement when he made up the thread, he was just echoing the hysteria behind the Daily Fascist - er sorry - Daily Mail article... I reckon he was taking the p*** more out of the reporter than MCR fans.... But it's not just MCR fans that the Tabloids vilify, they did it to Metal fans, they did it to Horror film fans, they did it to Gay Rights campaigners, they're doing it right now to Muslims and kids who wear Hoodies (I dont want to spark a major debate here, just making an observation is all..) - it's all the same bullsh!t to me, demonize a group in society and project everything onto them just to make Middle Class, Middle England feel better about their own prejudices and hang-ups - pathetic... -_- Uphold 'family values' when very often the problems that these kids who do self-harm actually have stems from problems within the family... Physical, emotional and sexual abuse in a good many cases, the only release these kids have IS bands like MCR.....

 

"Watching them plan their umpteenth timid assault on the hotel's revolving door, they don't look much like a terrifying youth death cult. Someone probably said the same thing about the Manson family just before they set out for Sharon Tate's mansion". Dear Lord, what a load of sh!te!!! Yeah, I'm really gonna be watching my back for a load of little emo kiddies when I walk the streets at night, because it's them who nick cars, burgle houses, mug old grannies innit....? Pffffffffft.... -_-

 

I honestly dont really know why such a fuss is being made about some Pop Rock band who just follow in the tradition of stuff like Busted or McFly, they just have silly hair, bad make-up and wear black, but fudamentally it's pretty much the same thing.... I mean have MCR themselves actually said they were 'emo'....?

 

One thing though - thank fukk no one is calling them 'Goths'.... :lol:

Here is a review of My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade

(All Music Guide **** Oct 2006)

 

MCR's third album The Black Parade, is an unabashed, old-fashioned concept album, complete with characters wandering through a vague narrative that concerns very big themes like death.

 

Actually, death is the only big theme on The Black Parade, which shouldn't come as a big surprise for a band that named their stopgap live album Life on the Murder Scene, nor should the record's theatricality come as much as a shock, either — tragedy and melodrama are hardwired in the group's DNA, as illustrated by the often-told tale of Way's inspiration to form the band. Also, it's not as if The Black Parade is MCR's first concept album, either. Their 2002 debut, I Brought You My Bullets, and its follow-up, Three Cheers, told the interlocking story of doomed lovers on the run from vengeful vampires or some such nonsense, but only the hardcore who were willing to analyze endlessly on the Internet were aware of this; based on pure sound, MCR was an emo-punk band through and through, screaming out their feelings as if they were revelations, so it was easy to assume that their music was merely autobiographical. My Chemical Romance took great pains to have The Black Parade seem like its own theatrical work, launching a whole Web-based campaign, filled with videos and interviews explaining how the album tells the tale of "the Patient," a young man dying of cancer in a hospital bed who flashes back on his undistinguished life upon the moment of his death, and how the band got so into this project they considered themselves not My Chemical Romance, but a band called the Black Parade — shades of the Beatles and Sgt. Pepper! Naturally, those allusions are quite deliberate, and one that MCR played up in that pre-release campaign, dropping liberal reference to Queen (particularly A Night at the Opera) and Pink Floyd's The Wall as well.

 

It was all quite reminiscent of how the Killers set up Sam's Town with endless name-dropping of Bruce Springsteen and U2, but where the Las Vegas quartet wound up with an unholy fusion of these two extremes, MCR never synthesizes; they openly steal from their holy trinity, then graft it upon the sound they've patented. Often, it seems as if they copied The Wall onto tracing paper and placed it upon Three Cheers. The story of The Black Parade is nearly identical to The Wall — Pink and the Patient run through a litany of childhood and adulthood traumas; absent fathers loom large; many of the main character's flaws are cruelly deemed the fault of the mother — and there are plenty of flourishes lifted from Roger Waters' magnum opus: the opening fanfare "The End" is a re-creation of "In the Flesh," right down to the churning heavy guitars that come crashing in halfway through, while "Mama" — shades of "Mother"! — sounds like Green Day performing "The Trial," as Way affects Billie Joe's affected mock-English accent as he comes tantalizingly close to following "You should have raised a baby girl/I should have been a better son" with "The way you made them suffer/Your exquisite wife and mother/Fills me with the urge to defecate." These are not the only allusions to classic concept albums, either — as promised, guitarists Ray Toro and Frank Iero conjure Brian May's spirit, "Cancer" recalls Sgt. Pepper as filtered through Oasis — but The Black Parade doesn't feel like a revival of '70s prog as much as it hearkens back to the twin towers of mid-'90s concept alt-rock: the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar. Manson's enduring fascination with the grotesque echoes throughout the album, from the artwork through Way's overcooked, bluntly ugly lyrics (highlighted by "soggy from the chemo"), but its heart lies with the Pumpkins, and not just because after his Parade makeover Way strongly resembles Billy Corgan.

 

Like the Pumpkins, My Chemical Romance shares a love of classic metal that manifests itself in both pummeling riffs and soaring guitar solos, plus they also have a flair for melody, two things that give their solipsistic rock muscle and grandeur. If MCR didn't have these gifts, The Black Parade would collapse in a pile of drama club clichés, sophomoric self-pity, and an adolescent obsession with death, yet they manage to skirt such a disaster even if they flirt with it shamelessly. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the album is a triumph. For one, The Black Parade plays a lot straighter than it reads. Sure, it has the marching bands, overdubbed choirs, radio-play theatrics, and Liza Minnelli cameos, a list that makes the album sound like a wild Grand Guignol rock opera but all of that winds up being window dressing to music that often isn't far removed from what My Chemical Romance has done before. Despite all these seemingly fancy accouterments, they're still a modern emo-punk band, which means for all the emotion poured out by their ever-earnest lead singer, there's little grit in their sound and Rob Cavallo's brittle production doesn't help, as its wall of digital sound emphasizes the sonic similarities between the songs instead of their differences. And there are a lot of similarities here: the bulk of the record is firmly within MCR's comfort zone, which helps make the extra flair — which doesn't arrive as often as it should — stand out all the more. But even if this isn't quite the radical break that it was intended to be, MCR does their signature blend of Sturm und Drang better than ever — "Dead!" rushes along on a series of escalating hooks, "This Is How I Disappear" surges with purpose — and when they're paired with tunes that do break the mold, like the wonderfully pompous title track "Welcome to the Black Parade" or "Teenagers," a tremendous reworking of the "Bang a Gong"/"Cactus" riff that is the simplest and best song they've ever written, it makes for a record that's their strongest, most cohesive yet, even if it isn't quite as weird or compelling as it should be given the group's lofty ambitions.

Here is a review of My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade

(All Music Guide **** Oct 2006)

 

MCR's third album The Black Parade, is an unabashed, old-fashioned concept album, complete with characters wandering through a vague narrative that concerns very big themes like death.

 

Actually, death is the only big theme on The Black Parade, which shouldn't come as a big surprise for a band that named their stopgap live album Life on the Murder Scene, nor should the record's theatricality come as much as a shock, either — tragedy and melodrama are hardwired in the group's DNA, as illustrated by the often-told tale of Way's inspiration to form the band. Also, it's not as if The Black Parade is MCR's first concept album, either. Their 2002 debut, I Brought You My Bullets, and its follow-up, Three Cheers, told the interlocking story of doomed lovers on the run from vengeful vampires or some such nonsense, but only the hardcore who were willing to analyze endlessly on the Internet were aware of this; based on pure sound, MCR was an emo-punk band through and through, screaming out their feelings as if they were revelations, so it was easy to assume that their music was merely autobiographical. My Chemical Romance took great pains to have The Black Parade seem like its own theatrical work, launching a whole Web-based campaign, filled with videos and interviews explaining how the album tells the tale of "the Patient," a young man dying of cancer in a hospital bed who flashes back on his undistinguished life upon the moment of his death, and how the band got so into this project they considered themselves not My Chemical Romance, but a band called the Black Parade — shades of the Beatles and Sgt. Pepper! Naturally, those allusions are quite deliberate, and one that MCR played up in that pre-release campaign, dropping liberal reference to Queen (particularly A Night at the Opera) and Pink Floyd's The Wall as well.

 

It was all quite reminiscent of how the Killers set up Sam's Town with endless name-dropping of Bruce Springsteen and U2, but where the Las Vegas quartet wound up with an unholy fusion of these two extremes, MCR never synthesizes; they openly steal from their holy trinity, then graft it upon the sound they've patented. Often, it seems as if they copied The Wall onto tracing paper and placed it upon Three Cheers. The story of The Black Parade is nearly identical to The Wall — Pink and the Patient run through a litany of childhood and adulthood traumas; absent fathers loom large; many of the main character's flaws are cruelly deemed the fault of the mother — and there are plenty of flourishes lifted from Roger Waters' magnum opus: the opening fanfare "The End" is a re-creation of "In the Flesh," right down to the churning heavy guitars that come crashing in halfway through, while "Mama" — shades of "Mother"! — sounds like Green Day performing "The Trial," as Way affects Billie Joe's affected mock-English accent as he comes tantalizingly close to following "You should have raised a baby girl/I should have been a better son" with "The way you made them suffer/Your exquisite wife and mother/Fills me with the urge to defecate." These are not the only allusions to classic concept albums, either — as promised, guitarists Ray Toro and Frank Iero conjure Brian May's spirit, "Cancer" recalls Sgt. Pepper as filtered through Oasis — but The Black Parade doesn't feel like a revival of '70s prog as much as it hearkens back to the twin towers of mid-'90s concept alt-rock: the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar. Manson's enduring fascination with the grotesque echoes throughout the album, from the artwork through Way's overcooked, bluntly ugly lyrics (highlighted by "soggy from the chemo"), but its heart lies with the Pumpkins, and not just because after his Parade makeover Way strongly resembles Billy Corgan.

 

Like the Pumpkins, My Chemical Romance shares a love of classic metal that manifests itself in both pummeling riffs and soaring guitar solos, plus they also have a flair for melody, two things that give their solipsistic rock muscle and grandeur. If MCR didn't have these gifts, The Black Parade would collapse in a pile of drama club clichés, sophomoric self-pity, and an adolescent obsession with death, yet they manage to skirt such a disaster even if they flirt with it shamelessly. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the album is a triumph. For one, The Black Parade plays a lot straighter than it reads. Sure, it has the marching bands, overdubbed choirs, radio-play theatrics, and Liza Minnelli cameos, a list that makes the album sound like a wild Grand Guignol rock opera but all of that winds up being window dressing to music that often isn't far removed from what My Chemical Romance has done before. Despite all these seemingly fancy accouterments, they're still a modern emo-punk band, which means for all the emotion poured out by their ever-earnest lead singer, there's little grit in their sound and Rob Cavallo's brittle production doesn't help, as its wall of digital sound emphasizes the sonic similarities between the songs instead of their differences. And there are a lot of similarities here: the bulk of the record is firmly within MCR's comfort zone, which helps make the extra flair — which doesn't arrive as often as it should — stand out all the more. But even if this isn't quite the radical break that it was intended to be, MCR does their signature blend of Sturm und Drang better than ever — "Dead!" rushes along on a series of escalating hooks, "This Is How I Disappear" surges with purpose — and when they're paired with tunes that do break the mold, like the wonderfully pompous title track "Welcome to the Black Parade" or "Teenagers," a tremendous reworking of the "Bang a Gong"/"Cactus" riff that is the simplest and best song they've ever written, it makes for a record that's their strongest, most cohesive yet, even if it isn't quite as weird or compelling as it should be given the group's lofty ambitions.

 

A very good, critical review (so clearly NOT someone who works for NME then.... :lol: ), they're actually critiqueing the music itself and not the fans or the image.... It's not making me want to actually buy it, but as a piece of journalism it piqued my interest, to me, it's everything a good Music Journalist should address....

Some of you have missed the point of my criticism of MCR & other Emo bands.

 

My biggest criticism of the current EMO movement is that it is the first musical movement/genre of the last 50 years where I find no musical merit or validity to it.

 

I have a very broad musical taste and my record collection ranges from the mainstream to the eclectic - the likes of Scott Walker & David Bowie doing Brel, Velvet Underground, Black Sabbath, a respectable dollop of Punk & Gothic acts, Joy Division, NIN, Nirvana, Suede, Manic Street Preachers, but all these EMO acts leave me cold, because they are contrived both musically & image wise.

 

MCR's singer/songwriter/mouthpiece Gerard Way, was animator with a Major Degree before the band took off.

 

Hardly Rock & Roll rebellion is it?

 

I (& the EMO movement) have purposely sited Marilyn Manson as a major influence, because real name Brian Warner named his persona after the "beautiful" Marilyn Manson & the "evil" Charles Manson and was an alternative music journalist before coming up with the latest of a long, long line of of shock rockers, rising to the top of the charts on a platform of sex, drugs and Satanism.

 

To be fair to Marilyn Manson I do admire the way that he made himself the most notorious and controversial entertainer of the 1990s. Striking a major chord with the US disaffected white suburban teens market — on the strength of a masterfully orchestrated marketing campaign, becoming a mainstream anti-hero, much to the chagrin of "stupid" right-wing conservative politicians and concerned parents. Using such shock tactics as appearing in Salt Lake City, ripping apart a copy of the Book of Mormon while on-stage. While the Church of Satan's founder Anton LaVey also bestowed upon him the title of "Reverend."

 

However, for me he will remain a poor man's Alice Cooper, while musically he falls way short of his peers Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) & Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails). Although I did like his material around 1996's Antichrist Superstar particularly the track "Tourniquet". But his follow up album "Mechanical Animals" was just awful, & don't get me started on his massacres of "Tainted Love" & "Personal Jesus".

 

The birth of Rock'n'Roll in the 1950s was brilliant because it was a youth movement. Since then the latest new cutting edge star/movement (whether it be Elvis Presley, The Beatles & the Rolling Stones, Flower Power, Heavy Metal, David Bowie, Sex Pistols/Punk Movement, Madonna, Acid House/Rave Music, Rap Music, Grunge through to Emo) will ALWAYS be criticised by the likes of Conservative News Papers & right-wing "Dick Heads" for being the route of all evil for teenagers behaviours because it is such an easy target.

 

But as I said before, I have a huge problem with the EMO movement, because it is totally contrived in my opinion by mostly middle class graduated Americans - (IE. it is not a new underground Working Class phenomenon like the Punk movement) & it has close to zero musical merit. Quite frankly it's acts make Robbie Williams seem like John Lennon & Bob Dylan rolled into one in comparison.

 

In short I resent anyone or anything that pretends to be something that they are not, and the idea of a bunch of middle class Americans trying to manipulate a bunch of stupid white American disaffected teens that they understand their pain & angst is utterly offensive. (It would be like Tony Cameron with 15 former Etonians in his cabinet pretending to be "down" with the working class - oh sorry they are trying that trick at the moment) :lol: .

 

Some of you have missed the point of my criticism of MCR & other Emo bands.

 

My biggest criticism of the current EMO movement is that it is the first musical movement/genre of the last 50 years where I find no musical merit or validity to it.

 

I have a very broad musical taste and my record collection ranges from the mainstream to the eclectic - the likes of Scott Walker & David Bowie doing Brel, Velvet Underground, Black Sabbath, a respectable dollop of Punk & Gothic acts, Joy Division, NIN, Nirvana, Suede, Manic Street Preachers, but all these EMO acts leave me cold, because they are contrived both musically & image wise.

 

MCR's singer/songwriter/mouthpiece Gerard Way, was animator with a Major Degree before the band took off.

 

Hardly Rock & Roll rebellion is it?

 

I (& the EMO movement) have purposely sited Marilyn Manson as a major influence, because real name Brian Warner named his persona after the "beautiful" Marilyn Manson & the "evil" Charles Manson and was an alternative music journalist before coming up with the latest of a long, long line of of shock rockers, rising to the top of the charts on a platform of sex, drugs and Satanism.

 

To be fair to Marilyn Manson I do admire the way that he made himself the most notorious and controversial entertainer of the 1990s. Striking a major chord with the US disaffected white suburban teens market — on the strength of a masterfully orchestrated marketing campaign, becoming a mainstream anti-hero, much to the chagrin of "stupid" right-wing conservative politicians and concerned parents. Using such shock tactics as appearing in Salt Lake City, ripping apart a copy of the Book of Mormon while on-stage. While the Church of Satan's founder Anton LaVey also bestowed upon him the title of "Reverend."

 

However, for me he will remain a poor man's Alice Cooper, while musically he falls way short of his peers Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) & Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails). Although I did like his material around 1996's Antichrist Superstar particularly the track "Tourniquet". But his follow up album "Mechanical Animals" was just awful, & don't get me started on his massacres of "Tainted Love" & "Personal Jesus".

 

The birth of Rock'n'Roll in the 1950s was brilliant because it was a youth movement. Since then the latest new cutting edge star/movement (whether it be Elvis Presley, The Beatles & the Rolling Stones, Flower Power, Heavy Metal, David Bowie, Sex Pistols/Punk Movement, Madonna, Acid House/Rave Music, Rap Music, Grunge through to Emo) will ALWAYS be criticised by the likes of Conservative News Papers & right-wing "Dick Heads" for being the route of all evil for teenagers behaviours because it is such an easy target.

 

But as I said before, I have a huge problem with the EMO movement, because it is totally contrived in my opinion by mostly middle class graduated Americans - (IE. it is not a new underground Working Class phenomenon like the Punk movement) & it has close to zero musical merit. Quite frankly it's acts make Robbie Williams seem like John Lennon & Bob Dylan rolled into one in comparison.

 

In short I resent anyone or anything that pretends to be something that they are not, and the idea of a bunch of middle class Americans trying to manipulate a bunch of stupid white American disaffected teens that they understand their pain & angst is utterly offensive. (It would be like Tony Cameron with 15 former Etonians in his cabinet pretending to be "down" with the working class - oh sorry they are trying that trick at the moment) :lol: .

 

Fair comments there. As far as Manson goes, I liked the first couple of albums ("Portrait of an American Family" and "AntiChrist Superstar"), "Mechanical Animals" and "Holywood" had their moments, but didn't really scan as full albums, "Golden Age of The Grotesque" was somewhat of a misfire, Manson just totally treading water, the 'covers' are just fukkin' dreadful, unforgiveable rubbish... I'd rather Manson never returned to be honest, just retire gracefully with his gorgeous wife and breed (hopefully for the kids' sake they'll have his intellect and Dita's looks... :lol: :lol: ). You are correct in saying that Manson does fall short of matching Reznor and Cobain in terms of talent and song-writing, and he doesn't even come close to matching the 'true' Goth predecessors such as Robert Smith, Wayne Hussey or Siouxsie Sioux. He can say what he likes, his best work was when he was collaborating with Reznor and Reznor was producing his albums...

 

I feel that you are fundamentally correct in your assessment of Emo (or rather, what Emo has unfortunately become, it wasn't always this way, the "emotional hardcore" scene actually threw up some classy bands at one point...), it is an utter joke, I just cant take it seriously at all... Fair dos if that's what the kids want to listen to, but it is an utterly contrived and manufactured scene... In its own way every bit as manufactured as Girls Aloud and Will Young in many respects...

 

Emo does have the reek of middle-class suburbia about it....

 

They're hilarious.... it's all been done before... many years ago and far better.

 

My Comical Romance, I call them..... :yahoo:

I liked Marilyn's album, Lest We Forget ^_^

And do I see him as a threat? No, but a 5 year old would :lol:

 

If I was 3/4/5 and I watched him in some of his vids on tv I would $h!t myself :lol:

I used to be proper scared of Marylin when i was young :lol: but now I realise that even if I dont like his music, he is a great performer and knows to push people's buttons

 

MCR arent evil, wtf? :rolleyes: there just a band that make good music, if perople cut themselves tis not because of music, its because theyve obviously got troubles: the music just helps them to feel like there not the only people going through it

Erm excuse me but I have self harmed yeh? And I didn't do it because of some morbid song - if anything the music makes me feel better when I was low, it helps to know that weird as it sounds somebody knows how you're feeling, even if it is just some words in a song. People just can't hack that emo is becoming successful and it's never been the dress sense of the 'oh let me slice my body apart' $h!t that makes me like the genre it's the actual lyrics themselves, much more meaningful than the generic pop c**p that is sung about broken hearts and the RNB love songs :puke:

 

I do love MCR - hate Marylin Manson - nothing to do with what he looks like, just find his music detestable but people should be worrying more about obesity, guns, terrorism. important things not attacking a band/genre just because they've recently gotten to #1 on the charts and blaming them for kids killing themselves.