The Black Parade Is Dead! Until it wasn’t.
The first performance of My Chemical Romance’s “Long Live” The Black Parade tour took place in Seattle on Friday, July 11. Since then, the show’s received praise from critics and fans alike, and rightfully so.
My Chemical Romance, also known as MCR, has remained an iconic part of the rock music scene since its formation in 2001. Over the course of 12 years, the band released four studio albums — plus several live albums, compilation albums, extended plays, and singles — before disbanding in 2013.
Then, in 2019, the band announced a 2020 worldwide reunion tour, which was delayed until May 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. May 2022 also saw the release of their first new song since their disbandment, “The Foundations of Decay.”
The current tour was announced shortly after MCR headlined the When We Were Young Festival in 2024 alongside Fall Out Boy. One month before the “Long Live” tour began, MCR released the deluxe edition of their sophomore album, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.
The Black Parade: Then and Now
The Black Parade (2006) is MCR’s third studio album and features instantly recognizable songs like “Welcome to the Black Parade” and “Teenagers.” The album draws inspiration from the theatricality and storytelling seen in albums like The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and Queen’s A Night at the Opera.
In a 2021 interview, Gerard Way, frontman of MCR, expressed that the themes in The Black Parade revolve around “the triumph of the human spirit” and the self-actualization it might take to overcome difficult times.
“There’s darkness in the world. And I think overcoming that darkness, that darkness externally and internally, is a beautiful thing,” he elaborated. “It’s a challenging thing, but it’s beautiful if you can do that, if you can kind of triumph over that. So that’s a theme that’s definitely in “Black Parade,” the song, and it’s in my work.”
In February 2007, MCR launched The Black Parade World Tour. During this tour, the band played the album in its entirety as the alter-ego band The Black Parade. They played as this alter-ego band until the October 2007 show in Mexico City, where the alter-ego band was narratively killed off. MCR continued the tour until the final performance in May 2008.
During “Long Live” The Black Parade, MCR once again plays the album in full as their alter-ego band. After an intermission featuring a performance by cellist Clarice Jensen, the bandmembers return — no longer in character, but rather as themselves — to perform a second set on a B-Stage.
During the first set, several adjustments are made to the album. Notably, “Mama” features an extended version, and “The End.” is given a reprise at the end of the first set. During their B-Stage set, MCR plays through ten songs from their various albums, with rotations being made each show.
The songs “Helena,” “I’m Not Okay,” and “Na Na Na” are included during each show. Some performances have included cover songs in the set, with MCR performing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” in Chicago, alongside Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan.
The Creative Identity
The tour’s marketing and performances present striking visuals that expand upon MCR’s established style from The Black Parade era. Oscar-award-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood designed the original black-and-white uniforms that the band wore throughout the 2006 era; however, the “Long Live” tour features updated and added costumes.
Emmy-award-winning designer Marina Toybina is behind these updates, having expanded on the original artistic vision through added details crafted to make the world of The Black Parade intimate.
“Every single little detail has been thought out carefully, and somehow, it makes a show in a huge stadium environment feel like you’re sitting in a tiny theater on Broadway watching a future smash hit musical doing a preview for the very first time,” Toybina said in an Instagram post.
A large portion of promotional material for the tour was conducted through teaser videos directed by Claire Marie Vogel, who also worked on the video content used during the performances. Throughout this content is the fictional language Keposhka, designed by letterer Nate Piekos in collaboration with Way.
The promotional material only further establishes the show’s narrative worldbuilding and visual identity, making the stadium tours feel both intimate and immersive.
The Artistic Themes
The tour isn’t just a spectacle, though; it’s rich with layered themes and undertones presented through the continuation of the Black Parade narrative.
With this tour, MCR introduces the fictional country Draag and its leader, the Grand Immortal Dictator. “Lending voice and song for the first time in 6,246 days, their work privilege ceremoniously reinstated, will be His Grand Immortal Dictator’s National Band… The Black Parade,” MCR writes in the tour’s announcement post.
The show is filled with political imagery — the Draag National Anthem plays before each show, propaganda and military footage are played, and an election for four individuals is held mid-show. The catch? It’s actually an execution — no matter which way the audience votes, the four individuals are “executed” onstage every night.
But throughout the show, The Black Parade seems to go from promoters of the Grand Immortal Dictator to rebels against the regime; by the end of the show, Way’s character is killed off by a Pierrot-esque clown character, and the remaining band members are forcibly taken offstage with black bags over their heads. The show ends with the clown dancing before revealing pyrotechnics under his costume, which subsequently go off, causing him to fall to the ground, implying his death. It’s intense.
Naturally, the tour has sparked a conversation among fans — what does this all mean? Deep dive video essays have been made, live updates are shared by fans during shows, and people have managed to translate Kaposhka into the English alphabet.
Some of my favorite theories that I’ve seen connect this tour to their fourth studio album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. “Art is the weapon” was a slogan used for that album, and some suggest that elements of this tour seem to be commenting on how authoritarianism and propaganda can abuse that weapon.
With so many theories being suggested and connections to past projects being made, the community surrounding My Chemical Romance has proven that their love for the art being produced is immense.
Over the course of their careers, the band has found not only commercial success, but has also established their art as some of the most in-depth projects out there, only made more meaningful by the passion shown by fans.
Considering their influence and legacy, the band’s “Long Live” tour is aptly named.
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