My Chemical Romance live review: The beautiful hellscape in Philadelphia
No one can get away with making a bog standard rock show anymore. The giants of the industry have continued to make fantastic music, but for anyone wanting to entertain a stadium, they need to do something extra, and My Chemical Romance gave Philadelphia a conceptual masterpiece ripped straight from Hell at Citizens Bank Park.
Then again, it should come as a surprise considering the band’s activity since their reformation. The new music might be scarce at this point, but all of their creative energy has gone into making some of the greatest visuals to bring their Long Live The Black Parade tour to life. The album itself is already considered a classic, but what they have done with it on the live stage is enough to make Roger Waters want to start taking notes.
Although the record itself takes its cues from the greatest conceptual artists like David Bowie and Waters, seeing them live is like watching them rebuild their masterpiece from the ground up. There was always a war-torn undercurrent to the show, but once fans were introduced to the fictionalised world of Draag, a standard baseball field was turned into something that wouldn’t have felt out of place in the middle of World War II.
With each member decked out like a gothic Lonely Hearts Club Band, they haven’t lost a single step in the years since. Frank Iero and Ray Toro are among the best guitar duos of the modern age, and even though Toro is known for some of the biggest guitar hero moments, it’s easy to pay attention to Iero playing co-frontman in some spaces, even playing up his own solo moments when building atmosphere with his whammy bar.
But let’s face it. What we’re really here for is the story, and Gerard Way is the best actor that Broadway never officially cast when going through this show. Outside of being in charge of the musical themes, the visuals are absolutely spellbinding, especially towards the midpoint of the album where ‘The Election’ takes place, sending four hapless executionees to a firing line and blowing them all away.
Given what they were going for, it’s no surprise that they had Alice Cooper as the opener for this kind of show. Cooper has been making these kinds of theatrics his calling card from day one, and what better way to get ready for a bloody mess than to watch when the foundational figures of hard rock tear through ‘Feed My Frankenstein’ and ‘Poison’ before being impaled on a guillotine? Also, even if it’s been weeks since ‘The Prince of Darkness’ left this world, Cooper’s dedication to Ozzy Osbourne during his performance of ‘Paranoid’ tugged on more than a few heartstrings.
And while the vocals have certainly changed since My Chemical Romance’s glory days, that’s not a bad thing at all. Sure, some of Way’s notes have to be a little lower than usual, but seeing how much wear and tear he put on his voice, thinking he could do everything exactly the same would have been impossible. No one possesses that Freddie Mercury range for long, but even when he plays with the melody on tracks ‘I Don’t Love You’, it makes for a completely different hook of the song. Or maybe it’s just about saving your voice for when those ‘WAKE UP’ screams at the end of ‘Sleep’.
Right after Way reaches the reprise of ‘The End’ and brings all-out destruction to the known universe, though, the show flips the minute that the beautiful cello solo from Clarice Jensen finishes. Now free of their stage garb, the band could be themselves, and hearing tracks like ‘I’m Not Okay (I Promise)’ feels far more intimate even for a gigantic stadium show. From the circular stage to the Oasis shirt that Mikey Way boasted onstage, this is like watching the band cutting loose and playing for the hell of it, whether it’s giving the people what they want like ‘Helena’ or digging up some deep cuts like ‘Bury Me In Black’ and ‘Destroya’ from Danger Days.
For anyone willing to take the plunge at this show, you might want to be prepared for more than a little bit of blood and gore, but blood doesn’t flow without a heart, and you can see that heart in the eyes of every person onstage that night. Because whenever Way looked out at his loyal subjects, he didn’t look with disdain by any stretch. His is the face of someone who knows that he was part of something bigger than himself, and seeing the looks on everyone’s faces, My Chemical Romance has created its own little family whose bond will never be broken.
