Album: My Chemical Romance, Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys (Reprise)

Who knew nihilist emo-punk could be so theatrical? My Chemical Romance revealed their penchant for the grand conceit with 2006's The Black Parade, a concept album about cancer that featured a queasy onstage mix of Busby Berkeley and pyrotechnics.

For Danger Days... they enter a Mad Max-like post-apocalypse of emotional abandonment involving posing with handguns in artfully distressed threads, wailing about how everyone is bad and wrong except, apparently, them and us. Phew! It's all delivered in a series of shrilly efficient rockers that blend Queen bombast with Green Day bubblegum-punk – a breed of sped-up, over-primped grunge that makes you wonder if Kurt Cobain had lived into his thirties (like MCR), would he have ended up like this? Perhaps not.

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