10 Perfect Rock Concept Albums

For a genre that has become classic these days, it wasn't necessarily cool to be a fan of emo around the '00s. Back when a band like My Chemical Romance were lighting up the charts, the gothic stripe of rock fan tended to get ostracized more often than not, getting ridiculed for dressing with dark colors and listening to bands that only had time to scream about how miserable their life was. Gerard Way was always into telling stories with his music though, and the Black Parade was the kind of horrorshow that any seasoned rock fan would be proud of.

Starting off the record with the sound of a heart rate, the story of the Black Parade revolves around a man known as The Patient, who is given a terminal cancer diagnosis and just 2 weeks left to live. Although our hero's time is short, the rest of the album shows him working through different stages of grief, all while learning he wasn't the most savory character to begin with.

As the parade of death comes to take him towards the midpoint of the record, he seems to become more and more scared of dying on songs like House of Wolves before celebrating the fact that he's probably going to hell on songs like Mama and Sleep. Towards the end of Famous Last Words though, he seems to see that little bit of light at the end, going through more convulsions and coming to terms with being satisfied regardless of where he lands. He might have some pretty black marks on his soul, but this is the kind of anti hero that you want to see survive to the bitter end.