“We’ll carry on,” Gerard Way insists on My Chemical Romance’s 2006 album The Black Parade. For fans, this lyric in particular became many things: a rallying cry, a promise, a comforting reminder that it was possible to face personal struggles like depression and grief. Since then, The Black Parade’s themes of loss and mortality have continued to strike a chord among listeners. Now, nearly 20 years after its release, the album is poised to take on a new, even larger life as My Chemical Romance will perform it in full across 10 U.S. cities in 2025 — the same year Donald Trump will take office for his second term as president.
My Chemical Romance’s Long Live the Black Parade Tour doesn’t quite coincide with an album anniversary; instead, it will arrive as the nation is six months into an administration that ran on terrifying, anti-democratic policies. Of course, My Chemical Romance couldn’t have predicted the 2024 election results in advance. Even so, the band’s prophetic decision to tour such a significant album at a pivotal moment in U.S. history will allow The Black Parade to be recontextualized in the context of national suffering and grief for America’s democracy.
Since its inception as a band, My Chemical Romance has been steeped in political discourse as they reacted to the burning world around them. Way famously formed the band after watching from a Hudson River ferry dock as the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. The next day, he wrote “Skylines and Turnstiles.” My Chem’s music further explored the post-9/11 era defined by George W. Bush’s global war, and the disillusionment that affected many of their young listeners living through this time. In his Rolling Stone review of The Black Parade, David Fricke wrote, “Teenagers are the ones who should be scared shitless. They are about to inherit a hell on this earth that is more terrifying, day by day, than anything Way imagines here.”
On the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks and My Chemical Romance’s founding, the band posted on Instagram, writing, “Today, we are collectively older and wiser, but still there to carry on when we hear the call.” Well, the call has come. Teenagers and adults alike are scared shitless of and fed up with the fascist world Trump has promised.
Some fans online celebrated the fact that My Chem’s tour announcement came a week after Trump’s win. “The entirety of My Chemical Romance goes into hibernation when a Democrat is in power and awaken when they sense a Republican like an ancient beast,” one user wrote on X, referring to the fact that the band has not released an album since Barack Obama was president. Another fan posted a screenshot of Way’s 2019 interview with The Guardian, where the lead singer suggested that MCR’s 2013 breakup was partially because they “weren’t needed anymore” during Obama’s presidency. The world, at least that of Millennial emo fans, desperately needs a vessel for our rage and discontent as we prepare to combat a racist, power-hungry convicted felon’s undermining of the U.S. constitution. The Black Parade’s revival serves as the perfect companion.
My Chemical Romance have kicked off this new moment with a series of in-depth tour promo videos. In the first video, the marching band characters and their iconic suits from earlier Parade visuals have been traded in for military personnel with outfits and demeanors that feel distinctly plucked from Hitler’s Nazi regime. It’s a chilling visual that can’t help recalling Trump’s plans to double down on his authoritarian rule. The parallels between My Chem’s new video and the future Trump has painted for the nation become even clearer in the video’s long caption:
“It has been seventeen years since The Black Parade was sent to the MOAT. In that time, a great Dictator has risen to power, bringing about ‘THE CONCRETE AGE; a glorious time of stability and abundance in the history of DRAAG. His Grand Immortal Dictator wishes to celebrate our rich and storied culture, fine foods, and musical entertainments by welcoming you to these great demonstrations of power and resolve. And lending voice and song for the first time in six thousand two hundred and forty six days, their work privilege ceremoniously reinstated, will be His Grand Immortal Dictator’s National Band… The Black Parade.
Long Live Draag”
This caption seems to be packed with conceptual lore related to The Black Parade, with references that will surely be explained soon. The salutation “Long Live Draag” might be seen as an echo of the line from “The End.” where Way sings, “Here’s my resignation, I’ll serve it in drag.” It’s almost like My Chemical Romance are refusing to go along with Trump’s anti-trans rhetoric, a sentiment which would align with Way’s well-known views on gender identity. The lead singer has been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights, specifically for trans people. In a 2015 Ask Me Anything session on Reddit, Way said, “I have always been extremely sensitive to those that have gender identity issues as I feel like I have gone through it as well, if even on a smaller scale.”
In another video shared by My Chemical Romance, four men who appear to be dictators sit before a woman who breaks into an opera voice straight out of a horror movie. Many fans on Reddit have speculated that this is an addition to the storyline at the heart of the album; it could even signal a whole new body of work is coming next. Meanwhile, some fans on Instagram have come to the conclusion that the characters from the video will be a part of My Chem’s theatrical live show, which is bound to be a high-level, intricate production. New music or not, the idea of singing “I am not afraid to keep on living” with a stadium full of people feels revolutionary and cathartic enough.
It’s important to remember that while their work comes at a pivotal moment, My Chemical Romance are not saviors or martyrs. Way made that clear on the album’s lead single, “Welcome to the Black Parade,” when he sings, “Just a man, I’m not a hero/Just a boy who had to sing this song.” All these years later, Way and My Chemical Romance will not save us from the terrifying reality of Trump’s presidency, but they will continue to respond to the world around them with clever and compelling art that can soundtrack the fight ahead and offer fragments of hope. In 2007, in the final year of the Bush administration, Way spoke to Rolling Stone with an optimism that feels poignant now, saying, “No matter how ugly the world gets or how stupid it shows me it is, I always have faith.”
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
