Illustration by Zoe Wren Arntsen, Illustrator.
Free carnations and red, white and blue flags for every visitor. The singing of the national anthem with a full military band. A dead dictator in a glass casket.
This isn’t a military funeral. This is a My Chemical Romance concert — before the real show even starts.
Celebrating the 20th anniversary of “The Black Parade,” My Chemical Romance brought back their old costumes and put together a new show for audiences to enjoy during their Long Live The Black Parade Tour. On Oct. 24, the tour came to an end at the Hollywood Bowl.
With this tour lasting over a year and a half, fans have learned to expect the unexpected. Unlike traditional concerts, My Chemical Romance created characters and even a fictional language and country to build an immersive, story-based show.
“I heard about the theatrics of the show, so I was really interested in seeing them live,” said concertgoer Liz Greene. “Usually when you go to a concert, you just think they're going to play, jump around. With this, you actually have a beginning, a middle and an end to it.”
Each leg of the tour revealed a new part of the story, sending fans searching for clues in cryptic characters and details.
Some fans, like Luke Legg, even came to multiple shows.
“I flew here from Virginia. It just started off as one of those things where they were playing with The Used, and I couldn't miss that show,” said Legg. “It cascaded on top of each other, like ‘Alright, well I'll go to this show, and this show and this show just to see it all.’”
For those who hadn’t been able to catch every performance, the band played a recap video as the concert began. Lights flickered, and the jumbotron flashed with clippings of guitar solos, fire, flags, an opera singer, a giant mechanical eye, an exploding clown and a countdown.
The video ended with an eerie warning.
“AND DEATH TO ALL WHO OPPOSE,” read the screen.
Still, the broadcast wasn’t over. A newscaster character appeared, detailing the story of how the nation of Draag conquered a neighboring city in a bloody battle. In the concert’s storyline, Draag is a fictional authoritarian nation; the members of My Chemical Romance act as their Black Parade, who serve as state-mandated propaganda.
Suddenly, the screens went black, plunging the stage into darkness. Then, red, white and blue fireworks burst overhead, their flashes illuminating the Hollywood Bowl as the stage slowly rotated to reveal the band. Belting over the explosions, a glamorous opera singer, Lucy Joy Altus, performed America’s national anthem, a reminder to the audience that the world of Draag is not so far removed from our own.
A new and improved American flag dropped from the ceiling as the band made their entrance. Photo courtesy of Scarlett Burns.
“Now come one, come all to this tragic affair,” lead singer Gerard Way began, an apt description for the rest of the show from the song, “The End.”
Finally, the traditional concert began — no more theatrics, just music. Right?
Two songs in, kickline dancers joined the band on stage, clad in military-green miniskirts and caps. After the song, Way loaded a PowerPoint on the screen and paused the concert to give a presentation.
Alongside his visual aid, Way explained how Draag has owned the United States for two months and made sweeping improvements, including: replacing the faces on Mount Rushmore with the leader of Draag, His Grand Immortal Dictator (Wayne Jay), remodeling the White House into a modern, cubic Grey House and turning the Pentagon into the Penta-Gun.
Closing out the presentation, Way performed “This Land is Your Land” with his own Draag spin.
“This land is your land. This land is my land. From gunshot island to the turnpike highway. From the roast beef ocean to the fields so golden, this land was made for you and me, but now it’s mostly ours,” sang Way.
While no direct comparisons have been made or confirmed by the band, fans have noticed similarities between the dictator character, His Grand Immortal, and President Donald Trump.
“It's definitely very political,” said Greene. “I can see some similarities with what's going on in our country. It's definitely a sore subject, but I loved it.”
The band continued to play through the album as usual for the next few songs, pausing after “House of Wolves” to wish His Grand Immortal a happy birthday. With a white cake brought on stage and the crowd all singing along, there was still one thing missing from the celebration.
Way pulled the trigger on his prop gun, sending blood splattering across the stage and front row as His Grand Immortal fell face-down into the cake. Because what concert is complete without a staged assassination?
“I definitely jumped out of my seat when they did the shooting,” said Greene. “I was not expecting all of that.”
Only halfway through the album, much more is to come, and none of it is expected.
During the outro of “Disenchanted,” Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader look-alikes stormed the stage, pom-poms bouncing as they rushed to rescue The Black Parade from the Draag military. Red lasers sliced through the darkness of the stage as the cheerleaders won the battle.
Jumping into their energetic anthem, “Famous Last Words,” the band continued to play and act, not missing a beat. Flames overtook the stage, and the song ended with a literal bang as sparks and fireworks soared into the sky, and Way mimicked detonating the giant nuclear warhead that had been haunting the stage the whole show.
Closing off the set with “The End,” the band was carried off into an ethereal white light behind the stage, finishing the story of The Black Parade.
Nukes, dictators, lasers, opera singers, ventriloquist dummies, cheerleaders and the show still wasn’t over. After a brief intermission, the band returned to the stage as their regular selves to perform a short setlist from their other albums.
While this secondary setlist differed at each show, the final night of the tour closed with “The Light Behind Your Eyes,” a song Way wrote for his daughter. The song closed the tour on a note of hope, suggesting that a better future remains possible despite the sacrifices required to reach it. After a show built around propaganda, violence and the collapse of a fictional regime, My Chemical Romance offered a different vision of patriotism: not blind allegiance to a leader, but a commitment to the people who will inherit the world left behind.
For a band that spent the night turning military spectacle into political theater, the final message was a fitting one. The flags came down, the dictator fell and The Black Parade marched offstage, leaving the audience to grapple with what they had seen and how much of it was really all that unfamiliar.