Douglas Laman Gets A Tune Up (Entry #9): The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance

DOUGLAS LAMAN GETS A TUNE-UP

ENTRY #9:  The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up is a series of essays wherein Douglas Laman listens to an album of music he's never fully listened to before (though he may have heard one or two songs from it) and writes up his brief thoughts on it.

For so many years, My Chemical Romance was a source of pointless ridicule from myself. Even though I had had no exposure to their music, I made them the butt of so many of my own jokes that degraded the band and their work simply because my younger brother was fixated on this band to a major degree back on his middle school days. Thus, the anti-MCR jokes, like the years in a Smash Mouth song, started coming and didn't stop coming despite me, again, having no actual experience with their music. For that, I truly apologize to the band and its assorted members, who, though not above any form of criticism, deserved to have criticism stemming from someone who had actually listened to their music.

It was mere chance that I came to the revelation that I should give a listen to the music of the band that had been the center of my ceaseless mockery. While walking one day this past Fall and listening to my iPod on shuffle, a My Chemical Romance song by the name of Na Na Na (it's the song featured in the Movie 43 trailer) came on. Though I instinctively wanted to skip it, I managed to let it play and found it to surpass my expectations in the process. Was there something more to this My Chemical Romance phenomenon than I had originally assumed? Could the band who had been the center of so many of my own jokes actually be responsible for good music?

A proposition I found to be ridiculous even a few months ago turned out to be the truth after I listened to the band's most famous album, The Black Parade. An album that has received a massive amount of positive reception in the nearly twelve years since it's release, The Black Parade begins, ironically enough, with a song entitled The End. This one is mostly a stripped down affair as lead vocalist Gerard Way croons as sparse guitar strings accompany him while occasionally larger-scale instrumental accompaniment interrupts Way's various lines, one of which, "Here's my resignation, I'll serve it in drag", feels especially interesting in the context of Gerard Way's recent real-life grapplings with his own gender identity.

That introductory song does a fine job of establishing the kind of music we're going to be getting for the rest of the album. Lots of guitar playing, lots of anguished piercing vocals and lyrics that proclaim the singer's internal pain while imploring the individual listening to the song to identify themselves in that internal pain.  That theme established from the first song carries over to the second tune on the track, as does the use of punctuation marks in song titles, with Dead! One of four tracks labeled "Explicit" on the album, this extended contemplation on life itself is rocking and rolling all the way through with pulsating guitar playing and bombastic drums bombarding one's eardrums in a way that immediately infects your spirit with an energetic rhythm. For a song named after the act of lifelessness, this one's got an instrumental accompaniment that's as lively as a Tigger on cocaine.

We go through two more songs, This Is How I Disappear and The Sharpest Lives, before arriving to the tune that inspired the name of the entire album, Welcome To The Black Parade. This is the famous one folks, and I can totally see why. I try not to be on to mince words so I won't do that here...I absolutely love this song. Starting off slow and steady as Gerard Way's vocals reminisce about his father taking him to a parade wherein he asks how his son handle his future. Will he be able to defeat the internal problems that constantly tear at his soul? Will he stand up for the downtrodden and oppressed? As he wistfully recollects this, the instrumental accompaniment gradually becomes more and more noticeable before transitioning into full-on rock n' roll at the very end of that first verse.

The song then becomes a manic spiral as the singer grows up and begins to experience loss and his ambitions becoming "decimated dreams". The cruelty of the real world has reared its head but still, the singer persists, chanting endlessly that he will "carry on". Despite all of "the fears" and "disappointed faces of your peers", he will continue to follow the words of his father from all those years ago. Doing this doesn't make the singer some messiah or God-like figure, he even says himself that he's "not a hero" and "just a boy". But the very act of carrying on in a world gone mad can still be such a struggle that it sometimes feels like a mammoth feat only a hero or a God-like figure can accomplish. By emphasizing their vulnerability ("I'm gonna show my scars"), My Chemical Romance is able to offer relatable council for those who feel the world has broken them. Even in times of grief, we can still march onward, we can still unite, we can still carry on the spirits of our loved ones even as they pass away. That is the purpose of the Black Parade.

What a phenomenal tune, one that feels like it could lift the entire album to the level of "amazing" even if every other track here was absolute garbage. Luckily, there are still some other memorable songs worth listening to on here. Nothing comes close to the quality or depth of Welcome To The Black Parade, but then again, many songs, in general, are unable to do just that. I would note though the weakest track emerges shortly after Welcome To The Black Parade though, specifically the seventh song Wolves which feels like a whole bunch of screeching without much in the way of thoughtful lyrics or interesting instrumental accompaniment (the drums and guitar playing here are some of the more forgettable on the entire album).

On a more positive note, right after that we get Cancer, a tune that stands out amidst the other tracks on the album thanks to it being a more slow-spoken track that has the lyrics being sung from the perspective of someone on their deathbed. The concept of death is a recurring fixture throughout the album (it's a pivotal point of Welcome To The Black Parade of course) but there's a sorrowful sense of regret informed in the lyrics and Gerard Way's vocals that really packs a punch in its runtime that goes over just two minutes. A track featuring Liza Minelli (Mama) and a particularly delightful tune entitled Teenagers round out the album, with the latter song being especially strong thanks to how My Chemical Romance manage to make a song version of an old man telling kids to get off his lawn incredibly fun to listen to. I know it doesn't sound like a song that would be enjoyable to your ears, but if I've learned anything from taking in this great album, it's that My Chemical Romance is chock full of pleasant surprises.