My review of Chemical Romance – Fire! Nuclear war! Killer parrots! This is stadium rock at its craziest | My chemical romance

MChemical Romance takes the stage to the tune of The Carpenters’ “Yesterday Again,” its sweet but heart-wrenching tones offering a reminder that MCR’s current tour is primarily about nostalgia: it celebrates the 20th anniversary of the release of the emo acts’ third album The Black Parade. An hour-long concept piece about a cancer patient, it was a band throwing everything they could think of into the album, seemingly out of fear that the multi-platinum success of its predecessor, 2004’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, would be fleeting. It sounded like pop punk, Queen, Britpop, glam, heavy metal, Pink Floyd around The Wall, and Kurt Weill, and was so deliberately over-the-top that when Liza Minnelli appeared on guest vocals, the listener rarely raised an eyebrow.

The end result catapulted the band to greater fame and their reputation grew in subsequent years – in some circles, they are publicly described as the Sgt Pepper of emo. A 2019 article in The New York Times revealed its influence not only on the work of a host of later emo bands, but also on the work of pop and rap names such as Juice WRLD, Lil Uzi Vert, 100 Gecs, Billie Eilish, Melanie Martinez, and Post Malone.

Fortunately, My Chemical Romance seem to have decided that the best way to celebrate the album’s anniversary was not just to perform the album in its entirety, but to spice things up a bit, as if they’d come to the conclusion that perhaps the original was a little too understated for its own good. Now it arrives with a whole new concept: a story about a dystopian dictatorship called Drago, which comes not only with its own language, but its own alphabet, designed by team leader Gerard Way. Government officials and soldiers with stern faces stalk the stage while the band performs. An actor plays the country’s leader sitting on the throne, emotionless in the shadows; Road sings Welcome to the Black Parade from the stage.

It’s not clear whether all of this is meant to comment on America’s slide into tyranny — though there’s certainly something of an apocalyptic obsequiousness surrounding Donald Trump about Way’s description of the dictator as “the most handsome man alive” — but it’s not entirely clear what’s supposed to happen at the full point. At one point, a mock execution by firing squad takes place in the middle of the crowd, followed by a wave of Boots Randolph’s Yakety Sax song, known as the theme from The Benny Hill Show. During “Mama,” a man runs across the stage with his back engulfed in fire. By the time the band reaches the famous “Last Words,” most of the set has been consumed by fire. Things about nuclear war flash across the big screens, which explains the fire, but it doesn’t explain why Way, in the middle of “The End,” is stabbed by a man dressed as a Beirut: he concludes the song sprawled on the stage, covered in blood, before the Beirut Man detonates an explosive vest.

It’s utterly bewildering, but equally, it would take a huge effort on the part of the viewer not to enjoy the relentless bombardment of visual effects and farcical acting, and actually the feeling that My Chemical Romance themselves are fully aware of how ridiculous it all is: the way the ventriloquist’s dummy sings an angry cancer song. What’s more, the music on The Black Parade is more than strong enough to withstand any image the band throws at it: no matter what’s happening on stage, the actual songs permeate it, whether it’s the T Rex-y glam teen ballad, or I Don’t Love You, which is basically a yellow Coldplay song with dyed hair, piercings and copious eyeliner around the eyes.

The second set, which navigates through the rest of their back catalogue, shows that classic songwriting is what underpins their grand concepts, and their ability to blend teenage angst into the material of high drama. Performed without costumes, actors or special effects on a stage in the middle of the stadium, the songs are no less melodically diverse or exciting than those in the main event: the outrageous joy of Vampire Money, the rousing rock of Helena, and Na Na Na’s bold mix of thunderous punk rock and Brian May’s rococo-influenced solos. For all the retrospection implied in the event itself, it also feels strangely contemporary, something underscored by the fact that a large proportion of the audience are clearly too young to remember this stuff being released. If the reconstituted My Chemical Romance choose to move forward rather than just look back, they will be thrilled.