Borrowing a little from Queen, a little more from Green Day’s American Idiot, My Chemical Romance is going for broke with their very epic and majestic sounding concept album, The Black Parade. In a season full of bands making moves towards the big time, My Chemical Romance makes the most surprising move away from their emo roots and takes on the landscape of the rock scene.

The album starts with the Chinese Democracy Guns 'n Roses-era sounding “The End.” The catchy and entertaining track “Dead!” seems like a guaranteed single, which starts the story of the concept of the album: a terminally ill young man on his way to death, and remembering the different aspect of his life. One song where lead singer Gerard Way and guitarist Ray Toro blend their sound to overwhelming glory is the sizzling “This is How I Disappear.”

“Parade” keeps it its stellar start with the first single, “Welcome to the Black Parade,” which seemingly was modeled in reverse style of the Queen classic “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions.” The song might be the eulogy of the character’s death in the story, but it comes off as the sunniest song on the album.

The album does hit a lull in the middle, with overly somber material such as “I Don’t Love You” and “Sleep,” which would probably be best left for b-side material. A song with Liza Minelli (yes, the Broadway Liza Minelli) called “Mama” seemed ill-advised and shoddy at best. The rollocking and sing-a-long “Teenagers” helps kick the album back in gear and seems like the band has been listening to some T.Rex in the making of this album. Guitarist Toro’s sound on the song sounds almost southern rock-ish, and pleasantly comes out of nowhere.

My Chemical Romance has often being tagged as the “poster boys of emo,” and many rock fans would love to see them leave from the scene as soon as possible. “The Black Parade” will probably quiet most of the naysayers and comes off as a band who would be probably happier than hell to tear that “emo” tag off of them anytime soon. MCR’s new problem now lies in keeping their own identity, and not coming off as a younger version of Green Day.

For the most part, The Black Parade succeeds in its grand vision, but the parallels between this album and American Idiot are too difficult to ignore.

GRADE: B+