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Music

One band, so many stories

By Jay Cridlin
Published April 19, 2007

My Chemical Romance's sound is loud, theatrical, gothic pomp that sounds like a rock opera conducted by Tim Burton. Last year's The Black Parade was punk's most ambitious album since Green Day's American Idiot, mixing head-banging fist-pumpers with vaudevillian chanties about blood and decay. The big surprise? It worked.

St. Petersburg Times pop music critic Sean Daly put My Black Parade at No. 4 on his Top 10 list for 2006, writing, "The true genius behind the Jersey quintet's punk-pop bombast just might be producer Rob Cavallo, who also helmed Green Day's thematically similar American Idiot. Best song: Disenchanted."

Some stuff about My Chem makes you a little queasy.

The band has a line of action figures that come accessorized with toy handguns and coffins. "We're a little bigger than Star Wars (figures) and fully articulated, and our faces are digitally scanned," singer Gerard Way told MTV News. "We're rad."

And short stories about the band are a disturbingly popular genre of violent and/or homoerotic fan fiction. A sample: "Gerard tried to get out of his handcuffs, the metal digging deeper into his wrists. . . . The vampires had captured him two nights ago, and, since then, he had been locked up in this room. Strange thing was, the only thing he could really think of was that one female vampire. She was different than the rest of them." Shudder.

My Chemical Romance performs at 7:30 tonight, St. Pete Times Forum, 401 Channelside Drive, Tampa. $30.25. (813) 301-2500.

[Last modified April 18, 2007, 11:19:07]