Revisiting an album that defined a career twenty years earlier carries an obvious risk. Bands often settle into comfortable museum piece reproductions, running through familiar tracks for audiences eager to revisit their youth. My Chemical Romance took a considerably stranger route on Wednesday night, October 21, as they began a historic five night residency at the Hollywood Bowl. Marking two decades of The Black Parade by performing the 2006 record from start to finish, the group reminded Los Angeles that their catalog was built on camp, combat, and unapologetic stagecraft.
The set paired the complete 2006 album with selections from across their wider discography, but the moment everyone talked about landed midway through the performance of Teenagers. Out walked a squad dressed in uniforms styled closely after the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. The real Texas dance team has turned up alongside high profile acts before, sharing concert stages with artists including Dolly Parton, Post Malone, and Kacey Musgraves. This routine, however, had nothing to do with standard stadium choreography or wholesome pop spectacle.
Gerard Way and company instead hired lookalikes to execute an unsettling piece of physical theatre. Carrying prop rifles, the dancers lined up as if defending the musicians from unseen threats before the scene deteriorated into violence. The cheerleaders collapsed, miming gunshot wounds, and dragged themselves off the stage on their hands and knees. It was a blunt, theatrical interpretation tailored directly to the combative spirit of the track, transforming what could have been a straightforward singalong into an uncomfortable piece of performance art.
The stunt took place during a landmark engagement for both the band and the venue itself. With this current run, My Chemical Romance became the first musical act in history to book and play five straight nights at the Hollywood Bowl. The Los Angeles dates arrive as a major domestic anchor on the Long Live The Black Parade Tour, an itinerary that took the musicians across the United Kingdom and continental Europe before swinging back into North American venues.
The twentieth anniversary rollout extends beyond the stage as well. To accompany the tour, the group issued an expanded edition of The Black Parade featuring six additional tracks. Three of those cuts document an October 2007 show at Maxwell in Hoboken, capturing the band inside an intimate 200 capacity room right in the middle of their original arena filling peak. The remaining three bonus tracks gather up B sides that had previously been scattered across various international singles and separate physical releases.
All the commemorative activity has inevitably brought questions about what follows. Way spoke candidly about the prospect of writing and recording new material during a concert in San Antonio last month, telling the crowd that another album remains an open goal rather than an abandoned idea. He explained to the audience that the musicians have always genuinely wanted to produce a new record if circumstances allow, acknowledging that the fans who kept the band going for so many years deserve another full length project, even if nobody can say when that might actually materialize. For now, the Bowl shows demonstrate that looking backward does not have to mean playing it safe.
