10 Rock Bands That Had Alter Egos

And speaking of dark subject matter, let's talk emo rock for a quick second. From day one, the genre has always gotten complaints for being too whiny for their own good, with most of the bands whining about how hard it is to get up and go to school every morning. There was a sinister edge to this genre though, and My Chemical Romance managed to become the spirit of death on their third outing.

Framing their entire concept album around a dying cancer patient, The Black Parade feels like Sgt. Peppers with a sinister streak to them, with songs like Mama and Sleep capturing the pure terror of knowing that you won't be on this Earth for very long. While it may have worked as just a fun uniform to be worn at every gig, Gerard Way was deadly serious about what he was doing here.

In the context of the album, the Black Parade is a vision that the Patient has, with death coming to him in the form of his happiest memory, that being when his father took him to see a marching band when he was a little kid. In that respect, Gerard is playing a version of the Patient, eventually cutting and dying his hair bright blonde so he would look like he was going through the same chemotherapy as the patient was. Considering the layers behind all of this, you weren't going to see something like this out of someone like Simple Plan any time soon.