I really wish I'd have been there at the brainstorming session for My Chemical Romance's disastrous new album The Black Parade. I bet it went something like:

"Hey, guys, it's that time in our career, the time when we need to do the most offensive concept album possible. I was thinking something about incest?"

"No way. That's too obvious. How about we belittle everyone with terminal illnesses instead?"

"That's brilliant! We can do an album about a cancer patient. I'll even cut my hair short and dye it white to get in character."

"This is going to be so awesome. Oh, man, you know what I just realized? 'Chemo' totally rhymes with 'emo.'"

Up until now, the concept album and classic rock excess blight of recent years has been content with infiltrating our pop-punk (Green Day), or making double albums squashing our alternative heroes (Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers) and even taking away our new wave (Killers).

But now it's combining with another evil force, emo, to reach its horrible, horrible extreme. The typical emo band makes a dateless Friday night from junior high into an epic tragedy on the level of The Iliad. My Chemical Romance is tackling life and death in an apparent bid to make its name a synonym for "over-the-top."

My Chemical Romance has always had a huge element of theatricality to its music, which is certainly fine. It'd have you believe Queen was a big influence here, and Freddie Mercury was nothing if not a showman. But the campy, winking stage presence mixed with ambitious topic matter is jarring.

Take for instance "Dead!" (the exclamation point is theirs, not mine.) What any sane band would have made at least a little downbeat is instead filled with gleeful chants of "And wouldn't it be great if we were dead?/We're dead!" I just hope than when I pass away, I can do it with a horn section and a chorus singing a "na na na na na" bridge for me. That's downright tasteful when stood up next to "Cancer," a piano-based ballad in which the narrator laments his sad fate, "Now turn away/Cause I'm awful just to see/Cause all my hairs abandoned all my body/I'm in agony/Know that I will never marry/And baby I'm just soggy from the chemo."

Now imagine those lines sung in lead singer Gerard Way's incredibly limited range, which stretches from "emo guy talking" to "emo guy whining" to "emo guy screaming."

Musically, the band gets a little more variety in, but still falls prey to monotony when left to its own devices. The aforementioned theatricality is really what drags the record down, though. It's like a bunch of high school nerds playing dress-up and putting on a show. Is there anything wrong with a little acting? Not if it's well done, but The Black Parade comes across like a sophomore trying to nail Shakespeare for this first role. Way is screaming all the words about death and destruction without putting any feeling or understanding into them. I'd invoke Wild Bill's old "sound and fury" line, but to call My Chemical Romance's glossy, over-processed guitars "furious" would be an insult to leotard-wearing actors everywhere.

The Black Parade is a silly album. It's either offensive in its topic matter or lack of creativity, and the over-the-top nature is either overwrought or too goofy to enjoy. After hearing this just two weeks after the Killers, I'd like to propose a new guideline -- no more concept albums from bands that wear make-up, please. Grade: D+