AT TIMES IT FELT LIKE THE RECORD WAS TRYING TO KILL US.
BUT IT ONLY WANTED TO MAKE US BETTER.
It was really amazing to see the characters come to life in the songs, sometimes through guitar parts or sound effects, other times I would find myself singing in another voice, a different person…sometimes a woman and sometimes a soldier. I decided to chop off almost all of my hair, which had become long and matted again. I wanted to feel like the patient and I also wanted to strip away all of the color to my hair…I wanted it white, which I saw as the absence of life. This helped me get into character, like method acting.
As we tracked the story got tighter and tighter but also I noticed the layers started to strip away, the fiction and metaphor of everything started to fade and what was left by the end of the record was something very naked, something very honest and very obvious…
WE WERE THESE CHARACTERS. IT WAS OUR STORY WE WERE TELLING.
Gerard Way, Black Parade Special Edition
As a band, it felt like the name The Black Parade summed up the band almost better than My Chemical Romance. It represented everything that made us up: the irony, the black humor, the celebratory nature of out music yet the darkness at the same time. The cohesiveness and the defiance, the camaraderie. It would become our alter ego for this album. We needed to become a new band in order to face what life had thrown us, the hardships and the turmoil, the fear. We would tear off our skin and expose the bones. We would become a band known as The Black Parade. Not a shell but a declaration:
‘YOU CANNOT DESTROY US.’
‘I AM NOT AFRAID TO LIVE.’
‘WE WILL CARRY ON.’
Gerard Way, Black Parade Special Edition