What's the story with concept albums?

    See, I can’t even think of how to describe it. One album of honourable mention would be From Them, Through Us, To You by Chicago rock band Madina Lake. From Them... is the continuation and follow-up to their breakthrough EP The Disappearance Of Adalia from 2006, and there are still two more albums in the story to come.
    The story is simple yet complex in that is sends the listener on an investigation into the mysterious happenings of the small town called Madina Lake (yes, you’ve obviously made the connection, good stuff). Flaky lover and town socialite, Adalia, disappears one night after the town’s annual masquerade ball in the 1950s. Your job is to find clues throughout the albums, on websites and even the album artwork, to piece together what you think happened that night.
    There are a few shady characters here and there, including Forrest, a key suspect in the investigation and Pandora, one of Adalia’s friends - the rest I’ll leave to you if you’re into that kind of thing. I would highly recommend it though, because if you’re not into the whole investigation sort of thing, it is a good album to simply just listen to if you’re looking for something new.
    I suppose that I should mention another concept album, to give you a full overview of the whole idea. I’m so going to get killed for this... but it has to be said that The Black Parade was pretty poop for me. The whole story about The Black Parade (My Chemical Romance if you did not realise) is that the main character, The Patient, dies and he goes to his interpretation of heaven, which is his happy place that happens to be a parade his father took him to when he was younger, blah blah, I’m sure you’ve all heard it at some point in your life. The concept was OK when I first got the album, I was really into it and before you even think about it you had better not call me ‘emo’. If you ever meet me, you will see that I am so far from emo that yeah, you get the idea.
    So the album was good, had some good tracks, it pulled at the heart strings, especially the song Cancer which makes everyone cry, apparently. But there came a time when the novelty and idea of the album wore off, and that was when it became so serious. The whole uniform thing, and the dying of the hair, this is a clear example of how not to make a concept record. I’m actually really dreading the reaction to this but whatever, you know.
    There are also the more popular, more well known concept albums, like The Wall or Deloused In The Comatorium by The Mars Volta (heck yes, I went there), but it’s surprising that Google tells me that a band apparently called ‘Spock’s Beard’ released a concept record in 2002. Oh Google, you so funny.