Have you ever wanted to watch a live execution at your favorite band’s concert? Or even watch said band get killed and dragged off the stage?
On July 11, My Chemical Romance, an early 2000s alternative rock band, kicked off their “Long Live: The Black Parade” tour, which was initially marketed as a rehashing of the band’s “When We Were Young” performance of 2006’s “The Black Parade.” It ended up being far more.
Thousands of fans built anticipation as they waited narrowly eight months between ticket sales and tour start. The band never explicitly announced what the tour was, adding a layer of mystery. Their previous tour was marketed as a reunion tour, and there was no new album accompanying this new tour. Instead, they were touring “The Black Parade,” their 2006 album.
Alongside being the band’s most commercially successful album, “The Black Parade” also launched them into mainstream media, landing them multiple MTV airtimes, a themed, largely sold-out world tour, and their only Grammy nomination. However, despite the many accolades and the band’s successes with the album, it was unclear why they were returning to it now.
The tour was marketed as My Chemical Romance’s “Long Live the Black Parade,” with one of the band’s guitarists, Frank Iero, responding to a fan’s Instagram comment saying, “You have literally no idea what we have in store for you. We do not disappoint.”
Fans were eager to analyze every aspect of the show when the band walked out the first night. To fans’ surprise, the more dissectable moments weren’t the surprise songs or friends of the band coming out on stage. Instead, they were theatrical performances, costumes, props, brief statements, and even paid actors, all crafted to present the New Jersey–based band as if it were a card-carrying part of a Soviet-inspired dictatorship.
While fans wait for the show to start, screens in the area show wanted posters and a series of rules written in both English and Keposhka, the band’s fictitious language.
The show then starts with a marching band-style drumbeat followed by the national anthem of their fictitious country, DRAAG, sung by Marianne: a real-life operatic singer/actress pretending to be a part of the DRAAG regime. The band is then introduced, not as MCR, but as a fictitious band from the land of DRAAG called The Black Parade. This is in addition to them coming out wearing reimagined versions of the costumes they wore on the original “The Black Parade” tour.
They claim to be the DRAAG national auxiliary band, part of the “reconditioning, brought to you by our grand immortal dictator” — said dictator is a real actor (most of the time) sitting on a throne throughout the show. The band plays their first few songs normally before breaking after their biggest hit, “Welcome to the Black Parade,” to reintroduce the dictator. The way the dictator is reintroduced has slight changes each night of the tour.
Then comes the live “execution,” voted on by fans via holding up signs given to them at the start of the show. The execution involves a group of real human actors with bags over their heads and wrist restraints standing on a secondary “B stage,” while cardboard cutouts of soldiers pop up, shooting with gunshot sound effects, smoke, and sparks. The actors are then stiffly placed into a single large body bag and wheeled away.
The voting signs change with each show, but the standard signs say “Yea” in red and “Nay” in black. Fans theorized that the “Nay” signs were black so they would be harder to see at night during the vote, making a “Yea” outcome, and the execution, inevitable.
At the Toronto show, the band handed out signs that read “chicken” on one side and “fish” on the other. The fans voted “fish,” and the people were executed.
At the Boston show, the colors of the signs were switched. At the Tampa show, the signs read Yae on both sides. It was a not-so-subtle nod at the illusion of choice in a democracy.
Political commentary continues throughout the performance.
During the song “Mama,” the band introduces a new verse in the bridge, alongside a story about frontman Gerard Way being in prison with “the Gentleman”: a puppet he carries whilst singing the addition to the bridge. This addition includes lyrics like, “You can’t see Berlin with the sun in your eye” and “And death be the sum of us all. This war is the sum of us all.” In tandem with the visuals of a bomb moving throughout the show and the German flag on Way’s arm, there’s an implication that the band are war prisoners forced to perform against their will.
Throughout the show, a man gives warnings and write-ups to the band, and he ultimately gets into a physical altercation with Way. He comes back out dressed as a clown and “kills” Way as the other members of the band are forcibly dragged off stage with bags shoved over their heads. The man then does a lip-sync performance to the song “Blood,” and finishes by blowing himself up with a special effects bomb vest.
About 15 minutes later, the band comes back out, not as The Black Parade but as MCR. Dressed in plain clothing, they perform on the “B Stage” out of character, with songs from their other albums.
Some fans theorize that the show is a time loop the band’s characters are trapped in, which is why, despite dying at the end of each night, they still return to the next show within a week. This goes hand-in-hand with all the minor alterations to each show, the slightly different behaviors, signs, choreography, and Way’s worsening appearance. Each day is somewhat unique, but ultimately the same.
Smaller details help build the overall narrative set-up. There’s a man seen running down the stage on fire, who remains unacknowledged. There’s “ceremonial wheat” laid down at the start of each show. The band was even given the key to the city of Belleville, New Jersey (their real-life hometown), and they neglected to break character, keeping their fictitious accents when addressing the mayor, and bequeathing upon him a ceremonial wheat and a fish they claimed to be from “a lake in DRAAG.”
These shows exist to satirize an increasingly fascist world in an intentionally non-specific way. Despite this lack of specificity, some fans, after the first show, wanted to “cancel” the band for using their concerts to make political statements they didn’t personally agree with.
Right wing fans of the band protested something that was blatantly mocking a fascist right wing ideology, even though MCR never directly names any American figures. They don’t even use American accents for the first act.
This past week, the band released new videos announcing a continuation of this tour, with tickets on sale Friday, Sept. 26. It remains to be seen what the DRAAG regime will bring next to the stage.
