My Chemical Romance

An attic in New Jersey, 2001

Gerard Way formed My Chemical Romance in September 2001, in the days after watching the World Trade Center collapse. The decision to start a band was a direct response to that morning, and the first song he wrote, "Skylines and Turnstiles", was about it. He could not play guitar and sing at the same time, so Ray Toro came in on guitar. His brother Mikey Way took the bass and supplied the name, lifted from Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance, which he had come across while working at Barnes & Noble.

The earliest recordings — "Our Lady of Sorrows" and "Cubicles", which the band call the Attic Demos — were made in drummer Matt Pelissier's attic. Frank Iero, previously of the New Jersey band Pencey Prep, joined on rhythm guitar shortly before the first album was recorded in 2002. That album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, came out on the independent Eyeball Records the same year. On 31 August 2003 the band announced a deal with Reprise. The distance between the attic and a major label had been covered in under two years.

The record everything else is measured against

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004) went platinum in the United States and established them well beyond the clubs. The follow-up redefined the scale of the band entirely. The Black Parade was released on 23 October 2006, produced by Rob Cavallo with the band, and built as a single narrative: a man dying of cancer, called The Patient, whose death arrives in the form of a marching band remembered from childhood.

It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, held off the top by the Hannah Montana soundtrack, and at number two in the UK behind Robbie Williams's Rudebox, selling 240,000 American copies in its first week. Four singles came off it — "Welcome to the Black Parade" on 12 September 2006, which became the band's first UK number one, then "Famous Last Words" on 22 January 2007, "I Don't Love You" on 2 April and "Teenagers" on 9 July. The album is four-times platinum in the United States, the UK and Canada, and had passed three million American copies by January 2018. At the 2007 NME Awards the band won Best International Band and Way was named Hero of the Year; the album's special edition drew a Grammy nomination in the boxed and limited-edition packaging category at the 2008 ceremony.

Ending, and the sixteen-year gap

Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys followed in November 2010 and remains, as of this month, their most recent studio album. On 22 March 2013 the band announced they were finished, writing that "like all great things, it has come time for it to end."

The reunion was announced on 31 October 2019, and the Los Angeles show booked for 20 December sold out almost immediately. Touring resumed properly across 2022 and 2023, and produced exactly one new recording: "The Foundations of Decay", released in 2022. Sixteen years after Danger Days, that single song is still the only new MCR studio material of the reunion era.

Draag

On 12 November 2024 the band announced Long Live The Black Parade, a run built around playing the 2006 album start to finish — something they had not done since 2007. It opened on 11 July 2025 in Seattle and has grown to 47 shows across North and South America, Europe and Asia.

The show is split in two. The first half is performed in character: the band appear as the 56th house band of the Black Parade, playing inside a fictional authoritarian state called Draag under a figure billed as the Grand Immortal Dictator, played by Wayne Jay. Way devised a written language for the country, Keposhka, drawn up by the typographer Nate Piekos, and the production is directed by the lighting designer Rob Sinclair. Executions, a mock election, a kidnapping and a stage hand running the width of the stage on fire all sit inside the album's running order. The second half moves to a B-stage with the costumes off and draws on the rest of the catalogue.

The commercial numbers are blunt. The first batch of North American dates moved 365,000 tickets within hours of going on sale. Resale and dynamic pricing drew sustained complaint, with some seats listed above $700. The tour finished 2025 as the 28th highest-grossing of the year and has now passed $122.2m from an audience of more than 812,900.

A stadium year

The 2026 itinerary was announced on 22 September 2025 and began with two sold-out nights in Mexico City in February. The UK and European leg opened at Anfield in Liverpool on 30 June, played Bellahouston Park in Glasgow on 4 July, then Wembley Stadium on 8, 10 and 11 July — a third night added after the first two filled, and the band's largest UK shows. Florence's Visarno Arena followed on 15 July and Iberdrola Music in Madrid on 18 July.

North America resumed on 9 August at Citi Field in New York, took in Target Field in Minneapolis on 24 August and Chase Field in Phoenix on 6 September, and closed its stadium run at the Alamodome in San Antonio on 12 September. Support changed city to city rather than running as a single package: Iggy Pop, Sleater-Kinney, The Breeders, Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, BABYMETAL, Jimmy Eat World and The Mars Volta across 2026, after Alice Cooper, Pixies, Evanescence, Death Cab for Cutie, The Hives and 100 gecs in 2025.

October 2026

What is left of the North American run is five nights at the Hollywood Bowl — 21, 23 and 24 October, then 30 and 31 October billed as Devil's Night, with The Used opening the first of those and Thrice the Halloween show. It makes them the first band to play the venue five times.

The 20th anniversary deluxe edition of The Black Parade arrives on 23 October 2026 through Reprise, with new artwork by James Jean and six bonus tracks: the B-sides "Heaven Help Us", "Kill All Your Friends" and "My Way Home Is Through You", plus live recordings from a show at Maxwell's in Hoboken on 24 October 2007. It comes on double and single vinyl, CD, cassette and digital, and follows deluxe reissues of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge in June 2025 and Danger Days in July 2026.

The more consequential news came from the stage. At the Alamodome on 12 September, Way told the crowd the band intended to record again — "We should probably make more songs… you guys deserve another record, and we'd love to make it." There is no title, no label announcement and no date. After the Bowl shows the tour moves to the postponed Southeast Asian leg, originally set for spring, which now runs through November and ends in Jakarta on 23 November.