My Chemical Romance – The Black Parade

MCR were top of the emo tree in 2006 when they released a concept album to rival anything from the big bands of the 70s and 80s.

Sporting marching band gear in all the pictures and on the world tour, the young Americans sang and screamed the story of a dying cancer patient on a disc that, while obviously morbid in some parts, was also lively, angry and even joyous.

Dragged along by a teenage son who loved the genre, I was blown away by both the theatricality and the raw energy of their epic Black Parade show at Manchester Arena.

As MCR’s style of rock reached its peak of popularity, then retired from the mainstream, the album remained one of the more memorable long players of mid-noughties rock.

Now it’s the Black Parade’s 10th anniversary, and a two-disc special edition to please fans starved of new My Chemical Romance material since the band split in 2013.

Disc one is the original album in all its noisy glory, and it hasn’t aged a day.

Disc two is entitled Living With Ghosts and features 11 previously-unreleased demos and outtakes from the original recording sessions.

Some of these demos are early, differently-titled versions of songs that ended up on the original album, others are separate songs that simply didn’t make the final cut.

Some fans will feel that apart from a couple of tracks there’s nothing much worth bothering with, others will jump on what could be their last chance of hearing something new from their emo heroes.

David Knights