Welcome again to the next entry in the Album Series!

We are heading into the 2000s with one of, if not the, seminal emo album of that decade and that is “The Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance. For those not familiar with the album, it is a concept album that deals with the main character who is at the end of his life and the songs drive the concept of the character’s memories of dying and his transition into the afterlife.

The album became a smashing hit for the band. Since “The Black Parade” was released, it has gone on to release over 3 million records in the United States. The band also embarked on a tour that lasted over a year and it also hit several continents culminating in their final show in New York City at Madison Square Garden, which I was happy that I was able to attend. The album is still very popular in the emo world and is regarded as a classic today.

There were several songs officially available for Rock Band 3 that you should get if you haven’t. “Teenagers” is a rock heavy song that served as a single for the album. And there’s also the iconic “Welcome to the Black Parade” that has been the calling card for My Chemical Romance since it was released. Everybody knows that iconic piano intro and the song is a blast to play in game. Through C3, “Dead” was released and is a rip-roaring intro (along with “The End”) into the album and is definitely recommended to pick up. Unfortunately, “Famous Last Words” was made DLC in Rock Band 4 and will not be included with this album release.

This entry into the Album Series is different from the other ones. While the other songs in the earlier entries were never released into the C3 database, every song that’s going to be listed here has been released in the past. I originally released “The Black Parade” album for download back in 2016 but found out pretty soon that there were numerous errors throughout most of the songs. Last year I finally got to work on updating all of the songs and was able to add a song I previously did not release. Before I get to mentioning the songs, I want to send shout outs to Fat Halpert for getting harmonies, pro keys, a venue, and instrument cleanup on “The End”, EdTanguy for creating expert pro keys charts and harmonies for the rest of the songs along with editing the guitar chart for a few of the songs as well, and Duhterminate for creating pro key reductions for the other songs. Without their help, these songs wouldn’t have turned out as well as they did. As for me, I was able to clean up the legacy instruments and redid reductions for them. I also redid the dry vocals for all the songs and was able to create a venue for all the songs (except “The End”). I hope this is the end of my journey with “The Black Parade” and I hope you all enjoy the combined efforts of everyone involved.

The first song in the group is “The End”, which serves as a fine intro that quickly jumps into the first full length song on the album “Dead”. Following that, there’s “This is How I Disappear” which is a port of the Guitar Hero 2 that was cleaned up. Enjoy a fun challenge for every instrument but is also a lot of fun! Following that is a song I’m shocked never became a single and that’s “The Sharpest Lives” which is one of my favorites from the album. Enjoy a nice guitar solo that was edited by EdTanguy to make it more accurate and more fun! The drums are also a blast to play. After that is “I Don’t Love You” which significantly turns down the mood into something more melancholy. I was surprised that this was such a fan favorite and one of my most downloaded songs! Again, thanks to the work of EdTanguy, the guitar solo here is more accurate and more fun to play.

Following that is “House of Wolves” which I originally never authored because there was a conversion of the song from Beard216. I saw that the song didn’t have pro drums charted nor did it have pitched vocals charted so I took that song and completely revamped it and realized it’s probably one of my favorite songs to play in game. The speed and mood of the song get turned up and is so much fun to sing! The next song up is “Cancer” and while it may not be the best song to play in Rock Band, lyrically it’s one of the stronger songs on the record. This song always gives me chills when I hear it and I’m always singing ” ’cause the hardest part of this is leaving you.”

“Mama” really changes up the album. The song is fast paced and is a challenging song to play in Rock Band. This song is also special because it features a guest vocalist in the form of Liza Minelli which was something new and I don’t think anyone expected when you first listened to the album. After that is “Sleep”. It’s another great song for the back half of this album and is fun to play on all instruments.

The last song that I charted for this album is “Disenchanted” and it was a great way to end my authoring for “The Black Parade”. This song really helped sum up initially what I felt when I authored this album. I was expecting this big grandiose feeling of accomplishment but when I got to authoring this song back in 2016, I was beaten and worn down by authoring an entire album. It did disenchant me to authoring and within two years of finishing this album, I took a sabbatical away from authoring. I am happy to have returned and am very happy to be able to correct the wrongs I made with this album.

Links for the songs can be found here:

I hope you all enjoyed the article and I hope you enjoy all the songs for this album!

Previous Entries in the Album Series:
1. The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
2. Silver Jews – Tanglewood Numbers
3. Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures
4. Summer Salt – Happy Camper

The Album Series is an ongoing project headed by Yaniv. If you wish to contribute to the series, feel free to contact him!