Customer Reviews
Love this album! 
2008-08-11
(daughter of user)
I bought this album, having only heard "Welcome to the Black Parade" and "Famous Last Words". I was so excited to learn that the rest of the songs were absolutely amazing too! There's not one song on this CD that I don't like. My personal favorite, "I Don't Love You" was so different from the rest, a bit more mellow, but still great. Anyway, keep up the great work, MCR!
Not too old to love this album 2008-07-27
I am a 55 year old attorney and the mother of four children. My youngest son started listening to this album and I got hooked. This is the first album since the 1980's that I have enjoyed and listened to repeatedly. I even went to see the group with my son.
I urge anyone who loves this album to ask their parents to listen to it. The melodies, the words and the theme are riveting. Although all the songs are great, I particularly like "When you Go" and "Famous Last Words."
Good Album 
2008-07-26
I love the intensity of "The Black Parade" and "Famous Last Words" so I had to buy this CD. I also found that I couldn't stop listening to "I Don't Love You", and "Cancer" moved me so much that I started crying. "This is How I Disappear" is also a great track.
All in all, I enjoy this album immensely and listen to it all of the time.
The best album I have heard in a long time 2008-07-21
TBH I had never listened to this band until a few days ago. Being 37 my tastes are more older school metal (Queensryche, older Metallica, Dream Theater etc...) with some newer stuff mixed in (HIM comes to mind.) I was looking for something new to listen to and this caught my eye. Well give it a chance. This album is excellent. My Chemical Romance has the sound of an updated Pink Floyd mixed with Queen mixed with commercial punk (ala Green Day.) Also what I enjoyed was the drummer and guitarists really pushed themselves. They worked hard on this album if that makes sense. Too many musicians today seem to take the easy way out with beats that are simple with no high hat work....little to no guitar solo's and down tuning with the same old sound. This band made the best album they could and it shows. It shows on EVERY song. If you work hard and take chances (expose yourself artistically) anything is possible...to bad more bands chose not to.
A winner whether you like it or not 2008-06-27
The biggest cry that people make against My Chemical Romance is that they are an emo copy-cat band. They have said time and time again that they originally were this way to get into the industry. However, as they evolved from their first album to their second (VERY easily noticed) their third takes yet another massive step forward as it delves into the realms of classic rock at its best.
The biggest and most obvious influences here, notably even mentioned by the band itself in multiple interviews, are three rock masterpieces. These are The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," Pink Floyd's "The Wall," and Queen's "A Night at the Opera."
Sgt. Pepper's influence is noticable right before you even put the CD in the player. Open up the booklet and the first two things you'll notice are the old newspaper-styled formatting and the photo of the band in black and white "death" versions of the clothes of the band members of "Sgt. Pepper's..." Beyond that, there is notably the very experimental feel in entire album, and some songs even seem to have a gentle yet brilliant anthem-like sound to them.
Queen's influence, as well as Pink Floyd's, comes in the overall quirkiness in the album, which can also somewhat be said about Sgt. Pepper's. The track "Mama" sounds like it could be right off "The Wall" (no pun intended) both in its sound and its lyrical content as well as possibly taking a certain level of direct inspiration from "Bohemian Rhapsody." The final hidden track of the album, Blood, sounds an awful lot like the short but brilliant Queen track "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon," albeit being a tad more vulgar (though offering the same sort of hilarity in the song on both the uncut AND edited versions of the album nonetheless).
Where the album stands strong is with its catchiness and its power to hook you in. Even though the first single, "Welcome to the Black Parade," was overplayed to the point no one wanted to hear it anymore (similar to with Green Day. I still say American Idiot was a genuine masterpiece), it really does strike a nerve somewhere. It's a powerful song and truly one of the best on the album.
Two other singles, "Famous Last Words" and "Teenagers" are also among the many highlights on this album. The latter of the two is so catchy that you will find yourself screaming everywhere "TEENAGERS SCARE THE LIVING S--T OUTTA ME!" The last single, "I Don't Love You," is a solid song, but there was a much greater potential in songs like "Dead!", "House of Wolves" and the true winner on this album "Cancer." The last song mentioned there is especially powerful when you have seen a person die or dying of cancer as the song is told from the perspective of someone with it. It's very grim and very sad.
Where many will consider them to be "emo" is in the overlying and highly prevalent theme of death. However, where this theme is most commonly and strongly used here is in the idea of moving on past death and understanding it better. I personally feel the examination into it is very thorough and almost feels like you're seeing a person's life in your mind as you listen to this album.
Overall, as mentioned in the very title, this album is a winner, whether you believe they are "emo" or not. This is a band with a future and a lot of potential. I, like many others, will keep an eye on them in the future and I highly recommend that if you have not yet picked up this album, do so. You may find yourself with the same sort of fixated eye as myself.
*****5 stars*****
Easily In My Top 5 Albums of ALL Time 2008-06-09
The Black Parade, My Chemical Romance's follow-up to its 2004 platinum major-label debut Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, "is way more dramatic, way more theatrical, completely over the top, borderline psychotic," says Gerard Way. "It's the most pure, intense thing we've ever been involved in." Producer by Rob Cavallo (Green Day), the album is a celebration of lvoe and death and darkness. Join The Black Parade.
AWESOME album... 2008-05-23
I bought this album expecting it to be almost like MCR's first two hits, not realizing that they had grown since then. The songs, along with the copncept, are amazing, to say the least. I listen to this album all the time. Every song has a meaning that I can relate to, and I recommend this album to anyone who is looking for a band that won't let you down.
The Black Parade Ain't Dead Yet! 2008-05-18
Their best album. It is a mixture of like a rock opera, punk, and metal. All the songs, even if you don't see the music videos you can see the darkness in each song or vision what the music video looks like or should look like. The began starts you off great and the end is great ending. The lyrics in each song can speak to a lot of people. They are all serious and somewhat funny. The MCR way. I saw them at the HOB and they were even great live. All songs but maybe two fit in like a story. The whole entire album is like a vocal rollercoaster and it is a great one at that. It flies by fast, it will make a long trip seem short when you listen to this. You would want to repeat all the songs and get back on The Black Parade float.
The Black Parade Is Epic 2008-04-29
From the first song to the last, The Black Parade takes you on an unforgettable journey. It brings up the common question, "what happens when we die?" My Chemical Romance paint a vivid image of what they think happens.
In the first song, we are introduced to our protagonist, The Patient. As his life ends, we are thrust into a fresh round of possibilities. Do we all go to Hell? Does Death come to us as our fondest memory?
The Black Parade is a masterpiece and is surely epic.
Like the greats, but sometimes too much like them 2008-04-29
First of all, I love theme albums. To me, an album should feel like a whole entity, not a shuffle of stuff that happen to be from the same artist. Theme albums aren't the only way to pull this off, but they are a great way to do so.
The Black Parade is the campy pop sensibilities of Queen, the dark epic story telling of Pink Floyd (a la The Wall), the drums of Smashing Pumpkins, the bass and rhythm guitar of Green Day, and the lead guitar of Guns n Roses. These are all things that I admire deeply. So why the uneasy feeling when I listen to this album? I think it's because it's too close to all of those things. If you told me that this was a super-band made up of members of those groups, I'd believe you. The similarities to The Wall are especially over the top. I love The Wall and was at first really excited to see the influences of it on The Black Parade. But as the album went on, the similarities became just too numerous. I can tell MCR is extremely creative but there was too little that was uniquely MCR among the homages.
This rant aside, I do still really enjoy The Black Parade. I don't purchase many CDs anymore but I'm very glad I got this one.
