My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
Dear bottle,
Please put up or shut up.
Sincerely,
Mayor Rev. U. B. Insightful
I assume you're challenging me to pull out my CD of The Black Parade, and make some pertinent remarks about how it holds up in the context of the last 40-something albums from the 60s and 70s.
Ok, game on. I used to play songs from this album in actual university music theory classes for dictation and formal analysis. My CD collection is obviously not organized, but there it is. Press play.
The opening track, "The End," is the prologue to the concept, and the darkness proceeds.
Call them emo, or alternative hard rock, who cares. It's rock, it's loud, it's eclectic, it's jawdropping. This album is almost 14 years old, and it's heavier than a couple legitimate contemporary death metal albums i've heard. That's a bold statement, but every single song is meant for you to sing along. When i say heavy, i mean it is all consuming. You feel every emotion double strength because the compositions are so detailed and precise. Every single twiddle, crescendo, whammy dip, chorus passage, sour harmony, abrupt caesura, everything serves the delivery of the lyrics and there is no empty space anywhere. To borrow a Mahler anectdote, every note proceeds as if it were completely inevitable, no other divergent unfolding could ever be possible.
There are a few albums that are emotionally precise enough to make me tear up, and this is one of them. To be clear, this is an exhausting album to listen to with the kind of focus and attention i bring to the table because i can't not actually perform it with my whole body (i'm physically affected by it).
I could spend paragraphs specifically connecting it to every other album i've talked about because it goes right down the checklist: borrowing from all sorts of genres, emphasizing strange vocal delivery to convey meaning, capturing that eclecticism in the theme and artwork, and never breaking the fourth wall ("now watch me shred" is anathema to this kind of sonic art). There are a couple ripping guitar solos, but they are literally "beyond words" moments that merely serve as a deep breath before the oncoming explosion.
"Teenagers" is the one garbage song. It fills a specific role for the album, but as a song by itself it's substandard.
At heart, this is an album about how it felt to exist in the 16-25 demographic during the 2000s. That's when the generation gap became a crocodile moat just like it did in the late 60s. The difference, of course, was that there wasn't even a fight to fight. Everyone in a position of power just shut the door and said "nope you don't get the opportunities to work your way up the business ladder. The job you take now is the rest of your life. Don't already have an advanced degree? Sorry, but you can take a number and if there's an opening for 'unpaid intern' we'll call you. Maybe you could go back to school to be a mechanic, or draw pretty pictures in my coffee or something. Your parent's will probably let you move back in with them."
Zappa constantly railed against the new breed of businessmen refusing to accept new ideas they didn't quite understand. And, as i said a little earlier in the day, music is a sandbox for life.
How'd i do?
Next
Please put up or shut up.
Sincerely,
Mayor Rev. U. B. Insightful
The opening track, "The End," is the prologue to the concept, and the darkness proceeds.
Call them emo, or alternative hard rock, who cares. It's rock, it's loud, it's eclectic, it's jawdropping. This album is almost 14 years old, and it's heavier than a couple legitimate contemporary death metal albums i've heard. That's a bold statement, but every single song is meant for you to sing along. When i say heavy, i mean it is all consuming. You feel every emotion double strength because the compositions are so detailed and precise. Every single twiddle, crescendo, whammy dip, chorus passage, sour harmony, abrupt caesura, everything serves the delivery of the lyrics and there is no empty space anywhere. To borrow a Mahler anectdote, every note proceeds as if it were completely inevitable, no other divergent unfolding could ever be possible.
There are a few albums that are emotionally precise enough to make me tear up, and this is one of them. To be clear, this is an exhausting album to listen to with the kind of focus and attention i bring to the table because i can't not actually perform it with my whole body (i'm physically affected by it).
I could spend paragraphs specifically connecting it to every other album i've talked about because it goes right down the checklist: borrowing from all sorts of genres, emphasizing strange vocal delivery to convey meaning, capturing that eclecticism in the theme and artwork, and never breaking the fourth wall ("now watch me shred" is anathema to this kind of sonic art). There are a couple ripping guitar solos, but they are literally "beyond words" moments that merely serve as a deep breath before the oncoming explosion.
"Teenagers" is the one garbage song. It fills a specific role for the album, but as a song by itself it's substandard.
At heart, this is an album about how it felt to exist in the 16-25 demographic during the 2000s. That's when the generation gap became a crocodile moat just like it did in the late 60s. The difference, of course, was that there wasn't even a fight to fight. Everyone in a position of power just shut the door and said "nope you don't get the opportunities to work your way up the business ladder. The job you take now is the rest of your life. Don't already have an advanced degree? Sorry, but you can take a number and if there's an opening for 'unpaid intern' we'll call you. Maybe you could go back to school to be a mechanic, or draw pretty pictures in my coffee or something. Your parent's will probably let you move back in with them."
Zappa constantly railed against the new breed of businessmen refusing to accept new ideas they didn't quite understand. And, as i said a little earlier in the day, music is a sandbox for life.
How'd i do?
Next
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