My Chemical Romance - Join The Black Parade

My Chemical Romance are about to explode. In the music sense yes - they’re about to become one of the biggest bands on the planet. But also with excitement. “We’re so excited about the release of our new album,” says peroxide blonde lead singer Gerard Way. “It’s so weird,” adds guitarist Frank Iero. “Cos it’s felt like forever. We finished the album the last week of July, first week of August. And it’s like we play shows and it’s one of those things where you imagine everyone else has heard it too. You just can’t wait man. We’ve been getting a really great reaction from some of the new stuff but like they don’t get it yet. Like nobody gets it yet cos they haven’t heard it yet.”

The album they’re getting so excited about is ‘The Black Parade’. Their third album and the one that’ll earn them their own niche in rock history and dispel any preconceptions the non-emo loving world may have about the New Jersey quintet.

In case you missed the first two instalments, MCR have always been a dark band. Their first album ‘I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love’ was a concept album about two estranged lovers who get back together when their town is invaded by vampires. She gets bitten and he kills himself to be with her. In ‘Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge’, their second album, which has now sold over 2.5million copies worldwide, the guy makes a deal with the Devil to exchange the lives of him and his girlfriend Helena for a thousand evil folks.

But things are about to become a lot darker and a lot more daring. Like their first two albums ‘The Black Parade’ is a concept album, but this time it’s about a character called The Patient and is based on the idea that when you die, death comes for you in the form of your strongest memory. The Patient is in a cancer ward dying tragically young and so when death comes for him it comes in the form of a black parade, as his strongest memory is of when his father took him to see a marching band as a child. The album is then an exploration of his life, which turns out to be much more colourful than he’d have thought, and is true musical theatre.

MCR, who formed in 2001, have always aimed to bring theatre back to rock music and in doing so became the forefathers for the current emo explosion. Their influence can be seen everywhere from the wordy song titles of Fall Out Boy to the amazing live theatrical shows of Panic! At The Disco. Something which Gerard comments, “I think I back what a band like that [Panic!] does. I think it’s good. I mean we didn’t start being a theatrical band so we could be the only one. We started it so we could inspire other acts to do that too.”

However, MCR are about to catapult out of the scene they helped create. Why? Because they have more ambition and imagination than emo, punk rock, goth punk or any other genre you want to try and put them in, has room for. Their current music inspirations are clear. “Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody change my life,” says Gerard. “I’d never heard anything like it. I’d never heard anything that daring or risky, or with so many different parts. Which has such a humour and yet rocks really hard. And I think that’s the stuff that we’ve taken for this band and for this record.”