Every generation gets an epic album to call its own. In the '60s, there was Sgt. Pepper. In the '70s, Ziggy Stardust, Night at the Opera and The Wall. In the '80s and '90s, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Anti-Christ Superstar and Use Your Illusion I and II. In the new millennium, we've had American Idiot. And now we've got The Black Parade, a disc that cherry-picks bits and pieces of all those predecessors and reworks them into a dark, stunning epic for the post-9/11 world.

Yes, that's right: We're mentioning My Chemical Romance in the same breath as Bowie, Queen, Floyd, GN'R, Green Day and The Beatles. Sure, they're a bunch of emo upstarts from New Jersey. But one spin of their third CD is all it takes to know Gerard Way and co. have earned their place in the rock pantheon -- if only for their boundless ambition and laser-focus determination. With The Black Parade, they clearly set out to craft the album of their careers. And they succeeded.

From its first second to its final fadeout, this 52-minute disc has all the ingredients of a classic. It's got a heavy yet simple concept: The inevitability of death. It's got a vague plotline -- something about a cancer patient's life flashing before his eyes in his final seconds -- that will reward fanatics without deterring casual listeners. It's got orchestras and choirs, bombastic arrangements and cinematic production, operatic vocals and layers of harmony, stadium-sized riffs and soaring solos, effects and even vocals by Liza Minnelli. Toss in some outfits that make MyChem look like Sgt. Pepper in Purgatory, and what more do you want?

Well, you want great songs. The Black Parade has about 14 of them. Case in point: First single Welcome to the Black Parade. It kicks off with a stark, haunting piano and a mournful martial snare supporting Way's keening vocal. As weeping guitars weave into the mix, the whole affair builds to a stately orch-rock crescendo -- and then shifts gears, exploding into a choppy, charging pop-punk anthem that crosses Freddie Mercury and Billie Joe.

On any other album, it would be a standout. Here, it's got plenty of competition. The End is a dark cloud of Floydian despair set to a beeping heart monitor. Dead! is bouncy pogo-punk that turns "Wouldn't it be great if we were dead?" into a singalong -- and then winkingly inserts Woody Woodpecker's laughing melody into its guitar solo. Other buzzsaw rockers like This is How I Disappear, the robotically pumping Sharpest Lives and the thumping House of Wolves keep the engine running. Grand power ballads like I Don't Love You, Cancer, Sleep and Disenchanted give the moshpit a chance to hoist the cellphones. Mama takes us to an Eastern European battlefield, with an ethnic gypsy ambience borrowed from Gogol Bordello and Minnelli as Mother War. Teenagers time-travels to the glittery glory days of glam, with its swaggering boogie-rock and generation-gap lyrics.

In the end, though, The Black Parade is about unity, not division. And when Way wails "We'll carry on," he makes it clear MyChem choose life, not death.

Set against the widescreen canvas of their relentless creative drive, it marks this as a disc for the ages -- and for music lovers of all ages.

Track Listing:

1. The End.
2. Dead!
3. This Is How I Disappear
4. The Sharpest Lives
5. Welcome To The Black Parade
6. I Don't Love You
7. House Of Wolves
8. Cancer
9. Mama
10. Sleep
11. Teenagers
12. Disenchanted
13. Famous Last Words