My Chemical Romance's "Black" Party—With Liza!

New York, New York: If the My Chemical Romance boys can make it here (with a little help from Liza), they'll make it anywhere.

There’s lots of buzz around the guys of My Chemical Romance these days. Mainly because tomorrow their latest album gets unleashed, and it’s a big, big deal. The Black Parade is a large-scaled, almost rock-opera-sized project which may thrust the band to the verge of supergroup stardom—at least that’s what all the early reviews have been claiming.

And possibly even more importantly, it seems that MCR is just about ready to throw off the emo label they’ve been shackled with from the group’s inception (maybe it was all that eyeliner?). NME has even gone as far as to call them the “the outrageously camp, loud and righteous new kings of the world.” Whoa.





With a quick listen to the album (click here for a FREE listen of the entire CD) it’s easy to see why. The very high concept record has already drawn comparisons to other contemporary greats like Green Day’s American Idiot and even Nirvana’s Nevermind. And as if that wasn’t impressive enough, it seems as though My Chemical Romance would prefer to be seen as a bit more ambitious than that. In a recent interview with Blender the band claims that they unabashedly ripped off three of the most dramatic albums of all time: The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, Pink Floyd’s The Wall and (their grandest choice of all) Queen’s A Night at the Opera.

The video for the first single, the salutatory “Welcome to the Black Parade” has been out for a few weeks now. Check it out (with marching skull-faced goths, actor Lukas Haas in a hospital gap and heavy eye-makeup, and some really luxe production design) here.

From the "Welcome to the Black Parade" video: That's Lukas Haas' arm in the air.

And then he goes and gets all marchy with eerily fabulous black parade-types. Why not?

Back to the album, perhaps the most unexpected, but undoubtedly fabulous, surprise on The Black Parade is a guest appearance on the track “Mama” by none other than Miss Liza with a Z herself! Apparently, Liza Minnelli was so taken with the boys she laid down the vocals for free. Lead singer Gerard Way explains how the collaboration came together: “My grandmother was a big Liza Minnelli fan. We needed someone that had a lot of character, someone that was very strong, sorrowful. So we put a call in and she did it for free. She was so sweet and just nailed it right away."

Well, if the band was itching for entry to the big, important band club, why not take Liza along for the ride? If nothing else, the guys and Liza can share fake eyelashes!