The song “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance forces me to break two of my own rules/preferences when it comes to reviewing music. First, I do not like to take songs out of the context of the albums that they are a part of, even though I am doing that more and more lately (see The Album Is Sacred). Second, I prefer not to judge a piece of music upon my early experiences with it. I like to let the music stew and settle in my mind, then forget about it, then come back to it to find out if my original impressions still remain.

But “Welcome to the Black Parade” is so good that I feel the need to express my early impressions of it without waiting to find out what I will think about it a year from now. The song starts out innocently enough with somewhat child-like lyrics with little accompaniment. From there the song steadily grows into a wall of sound that at times seems almost to be an homage to the influences of My Chemical Romance yet still shows the brilliance of their own songwriting.

The biggest and most obvious influence is Queen, with the build-up of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and a guitar part that Brian May himself could have played. But there are thousands of songs by bands who were influenced by Queen, Pink Floyd, and Smashing Pumpkins yet none of them (that I have heard) can match the emotion and intensity of “Welcome to the Black Parade.” Cries of “We’ll carry on” ring throughout the song building the tension and giving it some sort of chorus, building to a crescendo and release of tension on the lyrics “Do or die…”

Many songs that I think are great follow a pattern similar to “Welcome to the Black Parade” of starting out calm and slow then build tension through much of the song to reach a final climax at the end: “Stairway to Heaven,” the aforementioned “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “November Rain,” “One” by Metallica. I’m ready to add “Welcome to the Black Parade” to that list of great songs.