＊ 新世代摇滚新主张，盘旋崩溃边缘之声！ 　　＊ 空降英、美、加拿大销售榜亚军、iTunes专辑榜冠军！ 　　＊ 双週蝉联全英金榜、全美现代摇滚榜冠军单曲「Welcome To The Black Parade」 　　  　　一股黑暗势力正在蔓延全球，敲打阵阵撼动人心之庞克不羁声响，带出新世代摇滚新主张，My Chemical Romance(以下简称MCR)满载活力与冲劲，搭配EMO式盘旋崩溃边缘之声音表情，甚至硬蕊摇滚之重击勐拍、金属乐的强烈穿透力，年纪轻轻的MCR早在2004年已获Spin杂志讚誉：『值得你去注意的耀眼团体』。 　　  　　一如年轻气盛对音乐存着满腔热血摇滚客般的MCR，自高中求学时期就有着组团梦想，气味相投的两好友Gerard Way(主唱)及Matt Pelissier(鼓手)，邀约吉他好手Ray Toro、贝斯手Mikey Way接连加入后，MCR正式成军上路。2002年进入独立厂牌发行"I Brought You My Bullets，You Brought Me Your Love"专辑，再找来节奏吉他手Frank Iero为乐曲作更完美润饰。转签主流厂牌Reprise旗下换上新任吉他手Bob Bryar、推出专辑榜Top28大碟"Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge"，AP不吝情地标上『驶入主流大厂发行之首航将是年度备受期待的专辑！』，且随着现代摇滚榜Top4+英国金榜Top19「I’m Not Okay (I Promise)」、现代摇滚榜Top11+英国金榜Top20+流行单曲榜Top33「Helena」、现代摇滚榜Top9+英国金榜Top27「The Ghost Of You」三首强势单曲的推波助澜下，使得专辑由2004热卖至2005年，大破百万销售量。 　　  　　经过2006年以双DVD加单CD包装，超过四小时影视全纪录"Life On The Murder Scene"特辑夺下金唱片后，趁着热卖馀温献上的全新大碟"The Black Parade"，请到摇滚金牌製作人Rob Cavallo(Green Day、Alanis Morissette、Goo Goo Dolls)操刀。火力全开劲道十足之作「Dead」，一气呵成畅快到底的毫不加以稍作掩饰，全然释放庞克那份狂放骚动；首波单曲「Welcome To The Black Parade」，双週蝉联英国金榜&美国现代摇滚榜冠军，层次分明的舖叙，如同皇后乐团之吉他和管弦乐合鸣「We Are The Champion」气势，併入军乐队庞大编奏与多重人声堆叠，磅礡宣洩摇滚动人悍力。整张专辑在接连多首快节奏作品后，出现了一首舒缓却也透着沉重负荷的「I Don’t Love You」，搭上Gerard感染力十足的唱腔，轻易勾起内心被情爱刺伤之痛，而对于喜爱听MCR唱抒情摇滚的朋友则千万别错过「Disenchanted」。此外，「Momma」一曲架构在相当独特也透着有趣的编曲之中，戏剧化十足如同上演一齣精彩的摇滚百老汇剧；在末曲结束空白1分30秒之后所带出令人发噱的加值曲，可别错过。 　　更为成熟与多样尝试，加宽乐迷对MCR既定印像，融合复古及时兴旋律，调融摇滚音乐新概念，无怪乎NME和滚石杂志早已分别为此辑献上四星半以及四星近满分之高度评价，专辑更在发行后席捲全球排行榜，拿下英国专辑榜亚军，英、美、加拿大iTunes专辑榜冠军。 　　 　　At the heart of My Chemical Romance lore is the story of lead singer/songwriter/mouthpiece Gerard Way, an animator who decided to abandon illustrations and do "something with his life" in the wake of 9/11. Needless to say, that "important" thing was My Chemical Romance, which quickly rose to prominence among the emo and neo-punk bands that cluttered the rock landscape of the 2000s thanks in large part to "I'm Not OK (I Promise)," a surging piece of emo pop with a hook as ridiculously catchy as its title was ridiculous. It deservedly became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic in 2005, dragging its accompanying album — 2004's Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, the group's second — along for the ride, turning MCR into stars, at least in modern rock circles. But, anybody who didn't follow the fashions of emo and punk closely might have ignored the group's tragic, romantic neo-goth image and merely assumed that MCR was another good poppy punk one-hit wonder, not far removed from, say, Fall Out Boy. My Chemical Romance intended to dispel all such misconceptions with their third album, The Black Parade, 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.