My Chemical Romance wastes no time in cutting to the dramatic, macabre core of its songs. The band's third album, The Black Parade, opens with the theatrics of a heart monitor and explodes into an invitation to attend an ostentatious affair ' a whirlwind tour of a haunted house.
Complete with figurative and literal references to the living dead, ashen corpses, phantoms, ghosts, hospital gurneys, cannibals, beasts, demons, suicides, funerals, vampires and a s+
but when Way shouts lyrics such as, If you look in the mirror and don't like what you see/ You can find out firsthand what it's like to be me it's hard to imagine he is doing anything but sexing up self deprecation.
Appropriately released in time for Halloween, The Black cannot be taken seriously. With its penchant for horror-movie melodrama and flaky references to heaven and hell, the album borders frivolity, a far cry from Skylines and Turnstiles a cathartic post-Sept. 11 piece from I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love.
Indeed, My Chemical Romance is at its best when kitschy and lurid. They make death danceable with the upbeat Dead! and rock out with the anthem Teenagers
possibly an ironic response to the criticism they have received about darkly influencing depressed youth.
Mama shows the band completely embracing their melodramatic inclinations with lyrics such as, Mama
we're all full of lies/Mama
we're meant for the flies/And right now they're building a coffin your size. Way is nasty and vulgar on this track, sneering at a coy Liza Minelli sample with exclamations that hell is pleasant (though he confesses that he minds the smell).
If The Black Parade is a haunted house, it is a predictable one where visitors already know where all the actors are hiding. My Chemical Romance found in their second album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, a marketable horror show of easily digestible tracks. There is no reason to deviate from the niche they fill so well. If, as they say, what's in is despair
why not throw on the black dress
mix in with the lot?
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