During a year of touring and hard work, the boys of My Chemical Romance journeyed down an emotional and difficult road to bring us a dark new album that is “way more dramatic, way more theatrical, completely over the top, borderline psychotic” as front man Gerard Way put it. The Black Parade is not only the band’s third and follow-up album to their last (Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, released in 2004), but a completely different look and vision towards the genre of rock music.

“I feel that the thing about My Chemical Romance is that every time they make a record, they jump very far ahead,” explains Way during a press interview for the new album. “It’s almost as if we got into a time machine and made the sixth or seventh record.” The Black Parade is a concept album, or more commonly known as a rock opera, which is a story told through song (for example, The Who’s Tommy and Green Day’s American Idiot). This certain story follows a fictional character called ‘The Patient’ through his struggling life in sickness. He takes on an emotional journey to discover truth and meaning to his life and death.

So what really is The Black Parade, you might ask? Way explained that in the interview as well. “‘The Black Parade’ is the very basic premise of the record, which is when you die, I’d like to think that death comes for you however you want. And I feel that it’s your strongest memory, either from childhood or adulthood, and for this particular character in this record, his strongest memory is of being a child and his father is taking him to this parade. So when death comes for him, it comes in the form of a black parade.”

This is shown in their song and first single ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’, a song with big guitar sounds and a sort of epic feel to it, much like Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ but with My Chemical Romance’s own dark twist. You can find their new single available for download and find the video (which adds much more to this creepy tale) online. As for the rest of the songs, and the rest of the story behind them, you can pick up the new album in stores October 24 and join The Black Parade.