Bohemian Parody

"Bohemian Rhapsody"'s middle section, a tricky studio concoction, was not exactly a match for a rock show. On the other hand, a Queen concert that didn't include it would have ended with Freddie's lynching, so the band usually circumvented the problem by playing the record when the mock-opera started and abandoning the stage. The audience did the rest of the singing.



My Chemical Romance's chemopera "The Black Parade" often feels just like that: the band walked out and left other people's records playing. There's "A Night at the Opera," yes, and "The Wall", but it doesn't end there. "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness"? Yup. A little Ziggy Stardust? Check. The Doors' cover of "Alabama Song"? Indeed. Could "Cancer" possibly be a nod to Rufus Wainwright? Is that Green Day I hear? Heck, is that Blink-182? Yes, "Teenagers" is a great song, but it was pretty great when it was called "Bang-a-Gong" too.

But in spite of the way they jam their influences down your ear canal, "The Black Parade" is the first great screamo record, the first you don't have to be a part-time employee at Hot Topic to truly get into. It still has the bleak, black eye-shadow worldview of MCR's previous two, but it has ambition, which is more than I could ever say for Thursday or Fall-Out Boy.

And the songs are there all the way through. "Welcome to the Black Parade" may be the one to haunt modern rock radio for the next few years, but "I Don't Love You" and "Disenchanted" are wonderful ballads, "Dead!" "House of Wolves", and "This is How I Disappear" are propulsive enough to make you forget how silly the lyrics can get in their attempt to be nasty, and a tossed line like "I'm just soggy from the chemo" from "Cancer" has just the right amount of creepiness in it. Only the unnecessary Liza Minelli cameo in "Mama" threw me a little off.

But for all their histrionic "it takes the young to TRULY understand death and the meaninglesness of existence," it sometimes sounds like MCR has gotten their info on illness and death from ER reruns. Of course, if I was ten years younger I wouldn't even have noticed: there's so much here to lap up if you're of a certain age, and something tells me a lot of kids are going to remember this one very fondly a decade from now.

At my grand old age of 25, I can't take the teenager anthems as seriously as I would like. As it turns out, parents DO understand: they're just too busy working their asses off so you can get your damned Wii for Christmas.