LIVE REVIEW: My Chemical Romance in Boston, MA (09.07.25)
When you think of the early 2000s, the golden era of emo music, all you need to mention are the letters MCR, and people will immediately know what you’re talking about. That is, of course, New Jersey emo band My Chemical Romance, a name that often transcends the genre and extends into the general cultural lexicon of the aughts. This summer, the band has embarked on a North American stadium tour that sees them playing through their magnum opus, The Black Parade, in full. In its own time, the album climbed all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard 200, MCR’s highest charting record to date. But in the years since, it has also been celebrated as one of the most important rock albums of the 21st Century, even landing a spot in the 2020 edition of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, ranked ahead of records like Pretty Hate Machine.
The Black Parade is a concept album that centers around a character known as “The Patient” coming to terms with the end of his life as he dies from cancer. However, for the anniversary tour, dubbed the “Long Live the Black Parade” tour, the show has been completely reimagined and now centers around a fictional Soviet-inspired country, Draag, a dictatorship led by a character known only as the Grand Immoral Leader. Earlier in the tour, the Grand Immoral Leader role was played by a mannequin, but has since evolved and is now played by a live actor, who spends the entirety of the set sitting in a throne off stage, making subtle hand gestures, growing more displeased with The Black Parade (the band) as the set progresses.
The production for the show is as elaborate as anything I’ve ever seen on a concert stage. The Black Parade portion of the show is completely immersive, and the band stays in character as a rock band in the fictional country performing at the behest of the Grand Immoral Leader. It’s a refreshing way to see a band who are performing a nostalgia tour, rather than just playing through the track listing of the album; they elected to create an entire new universe to give a classic album an entirely new feel.
Before the band even takes a stage, a lone opera singer, referred to as “Sylvia,” performs the Draag National Anthem; she later returns during the song “Mama” to sing an outro to the song.
The audience participation is there as well, as fans entered the stadium, there were small poster-sized cards placed on tables with “YEA” on one side and “NAY” on the other. These were implemented during a skit in which Gerard Way, in character, invites the crowd to vote on whether or not to execute prisoners faced with the charges of stealing cake. Regardless of how the audience votes, the prisoners are executed by firing squad in one of the more memorable moments in the set, contributing to the narrative of a dictatorship void of any real democracy. This all happens right after the band’s landmark track “Welcome to the Black Parade,” which is played five songs into the set. (four if you don’t count the sub-two-minute intro song titled “The End.”
Many of the songs are played as they were originally written, but with new intros or outros to hand-tailor them to the new show production. In addition to “Mama,” we also see an intro referred to as “The Big Sky” intro for “Sleep” and “The Button Pressed” for “Disenchanted.” There are several skits as well, including the one that follows the final song of The Black Parade, featuring Gerard Way collapsing into the arms of a character in a clown costume.
Following The Black Parade portion of the show, a solo by cellist Clarice Jensen serves as an interlude while MCR does a costume change, going back to normal stage clothes, and make their way to the B-stage. The performance is a song called “From A to B” off Jensen’s latest album.
From that point on, the setlist becomes a nightly changing shuffle of the band’s other greatest hits, with a few deep cuts mixed in. At the Fenway show, they opened with the tour debut of “Vampire Money,” a seldom-played track off their 2011 album Danger Days. From there, they launched into “I’m Not Okay (I Promise),” perhaps their biggest song not from The Black Parade. Shortly after that, they played “Our Lady of Sorrows” from their debut record, and they dedicated the song to Nate Piekos, the letterer with whom they worked to create the language spoken in the country of Draag. When creating the language Piekos came up with new designs for letters reminiscent of something you’d see in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Gerard commented on the full moon that hung over Fenway, noting how it was the perfect complement to a My Chem show. After a couple more classics, including “Helena” and “Give ‘Em Hell Kid” the band closed out the show with “Vampires Will Never Hurt You” with Gerard commenting that due to the full moon the show would be a “double vampires” show, referring to the fact that they played both “Vampire Money” and Vampires Will Never Hurt You.”
My Chemical Romance shows have always felt like their own little world, fans camp for line spots, trade bracelets and fan-made zines, and dress up, boy, do they dress up. A good portion of the crowd, especially on the floor, showed up in costumes inspired by the lore of the band. From all eras, many decided to meet the moment and dress in Black Parade attire, while some embraced the Danger Days era. But on this tour, the band decided to literally create their own country. It felt partly inspired by Roger Waters’ The Wall Tour, which I was fortunate enough to catch a few years back. The most obvious parallel being a narrative centered around a power-hungry dictator.
The level of detail and commitment by the band members to stick to the overarching narrative of the story is something to behold, this is a show worth catching for casual fans and MCR diehards a like.
Featured Image by: Chapman Baehler
