My Chemical Romance adds drama to ‘Black Parade’ in Arlington, to mixed results | Review

Emo rockers My Chemical Romance have always had a flair for the dramatic, but Saturday night’s sold-out performance at Globe Life Field in Arlington layered on the theatrics, for better and for worse.

Lead singer Gerard Way and bandmates Ray Toro, Mikey Way and Frank Iero were in town on the only Texas stop on the Long Live The Black Parade Tour, celebrating the band’s 2006 album “The Black Parade.” This tour is the first time MCR has played through the entire “Black Parade” album since 2007.

‘The Black Parade’ meets The Black Parade, with a twist

The original “Black Parade” album is a concept album about an unnamed man, The Patient, who is dying of cancer. He embarks upon his trip to the afterlife while reflecting on his life. In years past, the band performed the album live as The Black Parade, MCR’s alter ego, clad in black, military marching band uniforms. Here, Way and Co. still embrace the uniforms and the alter ego bit, but have added another wrinkle to the proceedings.

In a series of videos and skits interspersed throughout the show, it’s revealed that The Black Parade band is performing a concert in celebration of “The Great Immortal Dictator” in the fictional country of Draag, a very Russian-looking, dystopian dictatorship. The right field jumbotron stayed on a static shot of the dictator’s hands for the entire show, with him expressing his pleasure or displeasure at the performance.

Upon entry to Globe Life, fans were given placards with “Yea” written on one side and “Nay” on the other. These were used during the most ostentatious moment of the night: The “Election.”

Right after the performance of “Welcome to the Black Parade,” the audience was asked to vote on the “execution” of four Draag dissenters. (Saturday night’s show got a “Yea” result, but other stops on the tour have had “Nays.”) After a firing squad only shot three of the four people, Way quipped, “One of our guys missed. We should’ve got someone from Dallas to do it.”

As the show goes on, it becomes clear that MCR/The Black Parade won’t make it out of the performance alive.

All of that added immersive world-building was interesting at times, but seemed a bit too much like a shako on a shako at points, especially when the original concept of “The Black Parade” is so compelling — how can you make the most out of your life while you’re still here to live it? (”The album, for all of its wild and operatic fantasies, stays honest. When faced with all that is being left behind, even when death is inevitable, there are so many who will still fight against it,” Hanif Abdurraqib writes of “The Black Parade” in his essay collection “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.”)

That’s not to say the theatrics weren’t well-received. The crowd was eating up every wild Way moment and interstitial. The band sounded great, especially bassist Mikey Way and touring musicians violinist Kayleigh Goldsworthy and cellist Clarice Jensen.

The show featured impressive and thematically appropriate pyrotechnics. By the time the band got to the final, cathartic chorus of “Famous Last Words,” everybody was screaming along.

But the first half of the performance felt like the Gerard Way who gave us the “Doom Patrol” and “Umbrella Academy” comics (the latter of which features a subplot about the Kennedy assassination) was doing a touch-up on the album when it didn’t need one.

Globe Life sound

The back half of the show saw MCR reach into their back catalog for 11 more songs, including “Helena,” two tour debuts and a Smashing Pumpkins cover. Way, no longer in character, freely bantered with the audience and routinely commented on how big the sky is in Texas. If you grew up listening to “Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge” and “I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love,” this section was for you.

However, here is where it must be said: Globe Life is not up to the task of hosting rock bands, acoustically-speaking. It’s unfortunate that the only Texas stop on this tour is at a baseball stadium that is notorious for bad sound design. The few songs the band played that I didn’t know in the second half of the show highlighted a sound problem from the first half: If you know all the words, it’s easy to overlook that the sound in the ballpark prioritizes guitars over vocals. That becomes much harder when you’re straining to hear words.

Or maybe I’m just getting old (we all inch closer to our own Black Parade every day, I reckon).

My Chemical Romance set list, Globe Life Field, Arlington Texas (August 2, 2025)

• The End.
• Dead!
• This Is How I Disappear
• The Sharpest Lives
• Welcome to the Black Parade (with “The Election” — “YEA” result)
• I Don’t Love You (with extended intro)
• House of Wolves
• Cancer
• Mama (with a guest opera singer; with “Dagger” outro)
• Sleep (with “The Big Sky” intro)
• Teenagers
• Disenchanted (with “The Button Pressed” intro)
• Famous Last Words
• The End. (Reprise)
• Blood
• From A to B (performed by Clarice Jensen)
• Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)
• Our Lady of Sorrows
• Planetary (GO!)
• I’m Not Okay (I Promise)
• Bullet With Butterfly Wings (The Smashing Pumpkins cover)
• The World Is Ugly (tour debut)
• Thank You for the Venom (with extended outro)
• Kill All Your Friends
• Helena
• War Beneath the Rain

This story was originally published August 3, 2025 at 5:34 AM.

Jake Harris

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

817-390-7237

Jake Harris is the Service Journalism Editor for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He has spent nearly 10 years working as a digital producer across newsrooms in Texas. He mainly writes about pop culture and local North Texas happenings and occasionally writes concert reviews.