On Saturday night, Globe Life Field traded baseball bats for black eyeliner as My Chemical Romance (MCR) brought their Long Live the Black Parade Tour to a fanatic crowd. Playing to a stadium full of fans covered in black and red outfits, the band put on a two-part show that was part theater, part emotional release.
Opening the night was alt-rock royalty Garbage, whose gritty set served as a fitting warm-up to the theatrics to come.
But once MCR took the stage around 8:30 p.m., it was clear the night belonged to them and to Draag. (Yes, Draag.) As part of the tour’s overarching concept, MCR has dreamt up a fictional authoritarian regime complete with its own dictator, anthem, and invented language (Keposhka, if you’re curious).
For the first act of the evening, the band performed their iconic 2006 album The Black Parade in full, framed as a performance for Draag’s “Great Immortal Dictator.” It was less a concert and more an immersive rock opera set in a fascist fever dream.
Flames shot up from the stage. Uniforms and salutes abounded. Video interludes introduced us to the Dictator and frontman Gerard Way leaned hard into his role as a demented, eyeliner-smeared mouthpiece of the regime. At one point, Way read to a puppet from a book on insects; another segment had the crowd vote on the fate of dissenters, holding up red or black signs distributed throughout the venue reading “YEA” or “NAY.”
All part of a dystopian satire, four hooded figures are paraded onstage and the audience is asked to vote on whether they should live “NAY” or die “YEA”. In a rare twist during a the show at Globe Life, one dissenter was dramatically “spared,” adding unpredictability to the otherwise grim ritual. Way then thanks the crowd with deadpan irony for “participating in democracy,” underscoring the farce. Fans have coined the entire sequence the “elexecution.”
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The band played their roles with intensity, the visuals peaking during “Mama,” when a stunt performer ran across the stage fully engulfed in flames. By the time they closed the first half with “Famous Last Words,” fire, ash, and a simulated missile strike framed a finale that felt like the final breath of a doomed world.
But after the break, which was marked by a somber cello interlude courtesy of Clarice Jensen, the darkness lifted. MCR re-emerged in street clothes and the mood followed suit. Gone were the characters and props; what remained was the band itself, raw and electric.
The second set leaned into fan favorites from Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and beyond, trading operatic doom for sweaty joy. “Helena” and “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” sent the crowd into frenzy, and Way, now speaking directly to the audience without a character mask, thanked fans for two decades of support.
The duality (first theatrical, then personal) captured the essence of MCR’s appeal: a band unafraid to blur the lines between performance art and punk rock heart.
Texas got special nods throughout the night, from Way’s admiration for the stadium’s sea of phone lights (“like stars over Texas”) to playful local asides. This tour is a love letter to the misfits, the outcasts, the ones who’ve felt seen in My Chemical Romance’s music for 20 years.
Tickets for the Long Live the Black Parade Tour are still available and can be found at mychemicalromance.com/tour.
Remaining My Chemical Romance Tour Dates
8/9- East Rutherford, NJ- Metlife Stadium
8/15- Philadelphia, PA- Citizens Bank Park
8/22- Ontario, CAN- Rogers Centre
8/29- Chicago, IL- Soldier Field
9/7- Boston, MA- Fenway Park
9/13- Tampa, FL- Raymond James Stadium (with Evanescne)
Photos by Jenn Terrell (@jennterrellphotogaphy) / www.jennterrellart.com
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