Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 23/10/06
Label: Reprise

Let's talk about ambition, there's a lot of it around. When Brandon Flowers recently mused on the fact that an ageing U2 might have to give up their lease on Biggest Global Rock B(r)and, it was clear he fancied the slot. Hence "Sam's Town", an album which sounds like ambition itself: big, brash, hollow. Better than Johnny Borrell, of course, who astonishingly managed to shave off the last vestiges of spiky personality he once had to deliver the achingly predictable love letter to radio airplay controllers that was "Razorlight".

Yes, ambition's been looking pretty ugly, lately. So three cheers for "The Black Parade", an album that clearly hungers for global adulation but refuses to compromise or pander in its pursuit. "The Black Parade" is a big, fat, obnoxious, difficult, overbaked concept record and it's all the more exciting for it. A meditation on death, the record opens with the bleeps of a life support machine and explodes outwards from this point of soapy drama, with guitars and melodies piling in upon the listener unstoppably.

The band set out their stall within the first three songs: the swaggering pomp of "The End", the wham-bam pop punch of "Dead!" and the sprawlingly anthemic "This Is How I Disappear". The guitars are a wall of sound, the pace of bass frantic, and Gerald Way's vocals whinily, winningly dramatic. It's imperious stuff and serves notice that any pretenders to the pop punk crown - your Panics and your Fall Out Boys - should just pack-up their things and go home to mother.

And then things begin to get really interesting, the band fearlessly trying any new trick that comes to mind, and damn the emo purists. Just listen to the strafing metal guitar jam that closes "The Sharpest Lives" or the wildly camp dramatics of the title track, one of the oddest number one singles in pop history. Or how about "Mama", a vaudeville strumalong which throws a Liza Minnelli cameo into the mix and almost pulls it off.

If there's a reference point it's the '70s heyday of Queen or Billy Corgan's messianic madness on "Mellon Collie". Like the latter it's inconsistent, lyrically clumsy and overlong - "House Of Wolves" sounds suspiciously like filler. But on its many peaks - the stunning, aching anthem "I Don't Love You", the thrillingly grimy singalong of "Teenagers" - this is almost literally peerless. Only Muse have similar ambitions but theirs are aimed at the skies while My Chemical Romance want nothing less than hearts. And they just may deserve them.

    by Jaime Gill