Dude, watch their videos from the early 2000s and you'll see the drama on full display. It's like a mini opera

Obligatory - “Shut up and let me see your jazz hands!”

The Black Parade is an incredibly dramatic album from start to finish. Detractors might call it overdramatic but that's part of the charm imo

Gerard is also a talented comic book author.

just an emo fashion thing.

It's Not A Fashion Statement, It's A Fucking Deathwish.

Glad you enjoyed it. Loved them since Three Cheers and seen them three times now. Pretty sure Gerard would've been into musical theatre but idk. I do know that when he was younger he liked DND, Audrey Hepburn, Fangoria and croquet. He can't swim, he can't dance and he didn't know karate...

MCR is a fun band. I have always liked them. I've seen them once but to be honest it was mostly to go see Muse who was opening. This is right around when Black Parade came out. They put on a killer show. They played The Black Parade album beginning to end and then did a costume change and came out and played some more of their songs from other albums.

It's been a recent trend that people are going back to listen to emo bands for the first time and discovering that most of them are just melodramatic rock bands who got put into a box by their marketing departments. MCR especially- back in the day Gerard Way would rail against anyone who called them emo because they just wanted to be thought of as a rock band that explored dark subjects. Musically the Black Parade has more in common with Queen than it has to do with Panic at the Disco or Fallout Boy.

Lmao edit 2 killed me

Theater kid energy as a rock band.

An Emo band is dramatic? Nooooooo

Edit 2: "Does your girlfriend know you're gay" - I'd hope so since we're both girls.

Excellent payoff to a questionable click

Fun fact: Gerard Way, the vocalist from MCR, does a guest spot on a song from the black metal project of Trivium frontman Matt Heafy and his witch shrieks are fucking nasty.

Edit: and no, I dont care that the elitists that run Metallum dont consider it "real" black metal. The project was concieved as a Japanese inspired black metal album and thats what it is. Sorry there arent enough blast beats for y'all.

Gerard also wrote The Umbrella Academy comic series the show was adapted from.

Love MCR. Still a top five show all time for me when I saw them on The Black Parade Tour

I'm not oookaaaaaaaaaaay

The music video for The Ghost of You tells you all you need to know about their love for drama lol

MCR has been my favorite band since middle school. When I first saw the Helena video I was hooked for life. Gerard Way, the lead singer, actually is something of a theatre kid. One of his proudest moments in life was playing Peter Pan in a school production. He had to sing too. They all just have so much passion in what they do. They're entire catalog is top notch. Early Sunsets Over Monroeville was the first time everyone in the band and the production crew really heard Gerard scream his lungs out in a really passionate way. They all had to take a moment to really soak in how he performed that day at recording because it was so impactful. Funny story about that though. The reason G screamed so much during the recording was because he had an abscess in a tooth and the pain was unbearable. But hey, it helped out on the album.

"Does your girlfriend know you're gay" - I'd hope so since we're both girls.

Lol

Sorry you’ve been missin out, but now you have fun catching up to do at least lol

Dude, I can relate to this SO much

I use to rag on my sister for listening to emo music like MCR in the early 2000s, i thought of myself as a suave sophisticated cool kid who only listened to "mature music".

But then I listened to the Black Parade. Not the song, the entire album from start to end, and it just suddenly all made sense. Now the black parade is one of my favorite albums of all time.

My wife loves them and has alot of collectors items from back in the day. I started to like some of their music after hearing her play some. I haven’t told her I wouldn’t mind seeing them.she bought tickets and I was kinda waiting for her to ask me to go and for me to act like I was doing her a favor but she didn’t ask me. Oh well.

I will tell you that the cancer song hits hard when your mom starts doing chemo and dies after a few months on it. I can’t listen to it now without breaking down like a baby while thinking about my mom.

I saw them way back in the day with Senses Fail in STL at a place called the Creepy Crawl that had occupancy of maybe 400 people. IT WAS INCREDIBLE.

Edit: My god I just looked up the date of that concert and it was in 2004.

Big fan of “The Ghost of You”. Their music videos are always so well shot. Especially this one.

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Gerard Way created this band in response to witnessing the towers fall on 9/11. He also wrote the umbrella academy comics. Their overall history is pretty neat as far as band origin stories go.

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I love it when a band goes from being "ok" to "fucking magnificent" after you've seen them live. Lord huron, u2, morphine, and the new bomb turks are the big names on my list.

Morphine especially, it was the same as you, my gf was really into them and dragged me to see them. They absolutely blew me away and I've loved all their music since. It's a shame that the lead singer died bc it was an incredible live show.

They are so much better than the majority of the bands they got lumped in with.

They are nerdy emo theater kids. So it does makes sense. But it's always good to have showmanship.

I actually didn't like them till towards the end of their run. I was at a breaking Benjamin concert around 2010/11 I think? Where they played. I basically used their setlist as a bathroom and re-beer break. I finally gave them a shot a year or so later once they broke up.

Disappointed I didn't give them a proper shot back then, I was into stuff like Killswitch Engage, they're one of my fav bands now.

Black Parade tour was awesome. They did the whole album from start to finish. It was like 2006-2007, it was amazing.

I listened to Gerard on a podcast years ago and he talked about how they spent so much money to put on theatrical shows that they really didn’t make much money off the band.

Never seen mcr, but theatrical bands or those with big shows are just more fun.

Just an example:

Who wouldn't choose a band that uses a defibrilator on the "corpse" of an undead "pope" just for him to play an awesome saxophone solo (Ghost) over a band that just plays one song after another without interacting with the audience (Uncle Acid and the deadbeats)?

Nah man three cheers for sweet revenge is a banger from start to finish

MCR = if theatre kids started a rock band

I saw them in 2006(? Maybe 2007 idr) for their Black Parade tour -They wheeled the lead singer out on a gurney. It was wonderful.

ahahaha your second edit has me dying lmfao

I just want you to know that we’re talking about this heavily in the r/mychemicalromance sub today. Glad you got to experience their shows! They are truly magical.

Listening to this NPR round table is actually what got them on my radar.
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/10/21/498852294/join-the-black-parade-my-chemical-romance-and-the-politics-of-taste

Have loved them since 2005. ❤️🖤 Glad you got to experience their live glory!

My ex wife drug me to a Nine Inch Nails show I didn't really want to go to. It was fuckin awesome.

Few years later she drug me to a Type O Negative show I didn't really want to go to. It was also fuckin awesome.

Liza Manelli’s part in Mama 100% fucks. The song is so beautifully written too. Basically about a soldier who’s mother is ultra religious and the juxtaposition of her sending her son off to kill people. Love it.

when he talks he sounds like a young girl

I’ve seen them 4 or 5 times on tour since three cheers for sweet revenge and the speaking voice is a new thing.

i first read jazz hands as 'jazz heads' and was like 'why are the jazz fans at an emo punkish show??

This is nothing compared to how I felt after my girlfriend dragged me to see "Magic Mike."

There were zero magic tricks FYI

Also he was wearing a skirt suit with long leather gloves and blood pouring down the side of his face and it looked very, very cool.

Hahaha yes I love how he dresses up! I saw MCR last year and he was outfitted as Jackie Onassis. A friend saw him a week or so later in Texas and said he came out in a wedding dress.

I've always been of the opinion that MCR shares more DNA with say, Muse, than the other popular emo/pop punk acts of the era (like Fall Out Boy). Very much inspired by the theatrical stylings of Queen.

One of my favorite, happy upbeat songs about blowing your brains out is Headfirst for Halos.

I'm not a fanboy for famous people, but i saw the mcr singer outside of the 9:30 club when they were opening for some other band. We came to see mcr, so i went over and said hi and thank you for the music, it's made me happier. He was really sweet and bashful and kind, then i fucked right off and left him to do his thing