My Chemical Romance

There’s arguably no day more fitting for My Chemical Romance to announce their reunion than Halloween, and on 31st October 2019 that’s exactly what happened – the band confirming that they will be returning to perform together for the first time in more than seven years.

The overwhelmingly excited reaction to this news was not surprising, like so many bands before them, My Chemical Romance provided the soundtrack to a generation of teenage angst, as well as inspiration for the way people dressed, behaved, and expressed themselves.

Despite their reservations about the term ‘emo’ as a descriptor for their sound and style – preferring simply ‘rock’ or even ‘violent, aggressive pop’ – the band nonetheless found themselves at the forefront of emo music’s insuppressible mainstream success around the middle of the 2000s, alongside the likes of Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy, and Paramore.

In the years since its release, the band’s seminal 2006 concept album The Black Parade has become something of a touchstone for the genre’s sound, style, aesthetic and cultural impact; in a fashion not dissimilar to the The Strokes’ Is This It? and The Libertines’ Up The Bracket for indie/garage rock on either side of the Atlantic.

Such was their success and popularity at this time, their ‘Black Parade World Tour’ spanned a mammoth 147 shows, across seven legs, and five continents; featuring appearances at a string of iconic festivals including Rock Werchter, Roskilde, Bilbao BBK Live, twin German festivals Rock am Ring and Rock im Park, and the now defunct T in the Park. What’s more, their support for the second American leg was none other than Muse, by this time already Glastonbury Festival headliners in their own right.

Landmark festival headline appearances of their own followed in the years to come, not least topping the bill at Reading & Leeds in 2011, in support of their album Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. And while there has been no album since then, almost a decade ago, the appetite for more My Chemical Romance still sustains for the hordes of adoring fans across the globe.