“Long Live” The Black Parade: How My Chemical Romance created the anti-nostalgia tour
We should have seen this all coming. On January 18th, 2022, My Chemical Romance were announced as the headliners of the festival When We Were Young.
This craven cash-grab on the nostalgia of elder millennials was organised by the folks behind Astroworld, Travis Scott’s ill-fated music festival in Houston, Texas, the previous year. It turns out killing ten people, including a nine-year-old, due to organisational negligence leaves you with a shit-ton of legal fees, so When We Were Young was their way of raising the tip.
Thus, My Chemical Romance treated this gig with the lack of reverence it deserved. After all, they were just about to embark on the arena tour that the Covid-19 pandemic had moved from 2020 to two years later, and had just released a new song, ‘The Foundations of Decay’, to mark it. They seemed in no mood to wallow in nostalgia. When the time came to actually perform at this celebration of how emos now had disposable income, the band metaphorically flipped the festival organisers the bird.
The band arrived onstage dressed in the suits, ties and makeup associated with their iconic, beloved album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, but there was something different about them. Namely, each member of the band was wearing a ghoulish facemask depicting themselves about 70 years older than they currently were, all apart from bassist Mikey Way. Since he’s barely changed physically from their 2000s heyday, he was made up to look like a vampire.
It’s not for nothing that their set ended with a cataclysmic run through of Danger Days closer ‘Vampire Money’. This terrific garage rock banger was written to tell the makers of the Twilight franchise in no uncertain terms that they’re not interested in writing a song for them. The track was only lent a deeper layer of meaning, turning up at the end of this cash grab of a festival. My Chemical Romance is not a nostalgia act, and they never, ever will be.
What makes a My Chemical Romance anniversary tour?
With ‘The Foundations of Decay’ being one of the most beloved songs in their back catalogue and whispers of the elusive fifth My Chemical Romance album getting louder by the day, their next move was something of a surprise. On November 12th, 2024, they announced “Long Live” The Black Parade, a tour to commemorate 20 years of their mainstream peak, 2006’s classic album The Black Parade. That next summer, they would take to the baseball stadiums of America to play the album in full, just as they’d done two decades prior.
For a band that had just a few years earlier made a massive stunt out of declaring their opposition to nostalgia, this was a strange choice. Was this the group resting on their laurels? Of them admitting that what people want from them is songs from 20 years ago? That all they really wanted to do was make depressed 30-somethings feel like depressed teenagers again? Honestly, any fear of that was assuaged by the very first trailers and promo material dropped for the tour, which were deeply, thrillingly weird.
The Black Parade has iconography in spades. The visual language of that record was imprinted on misfits of a certain generation, and there was absolutely none of it on display. What was previously a monochrome, ghoulish, Tim Burton-esque, fantastical noir was suddenly stark, realistic and militaristic. The first promo-poster said it all: a man dressed in an almost regal military uniform stood with his back to the viewer, in front of a huge crowd of cheering people in the middle of a grey, Soviet-esque city centre. We were not in Kansas anymore, Toto, we were in Draag, at the behest of his Grand Immortal Dictator.
Confused? Best get used to it, because we’ve only just stepped into the rabbit hole here. The announcement was combined with a press release that detailed brand-new lore regarding the album and the universe the band had created. 17 years ago, so it said, The Black Parade (the alter-ego band My Chemical Romance played when the album was released) was sent to the “MOAT” and, in the meantime, a dictator rose to power in this fictional country. In his infinite power and wisdom, he has resurrected The Black Parade and is taking them around the world to show off the culture and music of Draag.
Needless to say, absolutely none of this has anything to do with what The Black Parade was back in the day. It only got weirder as the tour began, with staged executions on stage, concerts beginning with a recital of the Draag national anthem, and an entire language created specifically for the tour by typographist Nate Piekos. One that is sported on nearly all the tour merchandise, down to the labels. While the band are playing music released nearly 20 years ago, the very last thing the band want is for their audience to wallow in comfy nostalgia.
Especially when you take into account what the actual story the Draag saga is telling. Whatever The Black Parade stood for when they were abducted 17 years ago has been crushed in favour of propping up a fascist dictatorship. One that executes people who protest it, threatens foreign countries with nuclear weapons and sees its very populace as nothing more than an exploitable workforce in service of its rulers. If that doesn’t sound familiar, then you haven’t been paying attention.
There’s no telling how deep the rabbit hole goes. Every show seems to throw up a new easter egg that widens the story the band are telling with arguably the most exciting concert tour of the year. With one tour, My Chemical Romance have proven that an anniversary tour doesn’t have to be a craven cash-grab. That done with the right mix of creativity, bravery and madness, a celebration of an album from two decades ago can be just as vital, relevant and exciting as any release from this year, if not more so. It’s one hell of a gauntlet to lay down, and one can only hope someone attempts to pick it up soon.
