Review: Eleven years later and My Chemical Romance has returned to Washington

Music

Oct 4

☆ Dylan Zucati ☆

AFTER ELEVEN LONG YEARS AND TWO POSTPONED ATTEMPTS - My Chemical Romance is back, dripping with angst for the modern age.

If you’re ever seeing a band as big as My Chemical Romance, plan to be out of your car and on your way into the Tacoma Dome by the second opener, or you’re in for a world of hurt. We were told Kimya Dawson and Taking Back Sunday had great sets. I wish I could have seen Kimya Dawson perform Anyone Else But You with MCR’s Frank Lero, but Gerard Way dedicated Teenagers to their child Panda, and that was enough.

My Chemical Romance began their set with five minutes of buzzing, something between the beating of fly wings and guitar feedback. Every concert on the tour has begun with The Foundations of Decay and I wonder if everyone gets this anticipatory static. If you’ve been following the reunion tour so far, you know that every city has had a different setlist and outfit. Tonight’s setlist showcased the care MCR has for keeping the tour fresh and engaging; only consecutively playing two tracks off the same album once, when they played Famous Last Words into Welcome to the Black Parade before their encore, and alternating between albums every other song.

The band sounds as good as ever, taking new approaches to classic songs and relying on their audience who knew every word, no matter how deep the cut. The band delivered all night, every member bringing an electrified energy to the concert, but it is hard to talk about anyone other than Gerard Way, frontman of My Chemical Romance and conductor for the frenzied audience. The man runs around the stage, rolling on the ground, kicking his feet behind his back like he’s at a slumber party, and posing with his leg up on an amp as if he’s giving a speech to soldiers headed into war. His performance would be physically exhaustive for anyone, but tonight he did it all in a long sleeve shirt, saying “it’s hot, but it’s a good hot”.

Every couple of songs, Gerard Way would punctuate a moment with a few words. There were no long speeches or banter, but an inside joke he seemed to be having with himself. Preempting the song Mama, Gerard said, “This may not be the most sonically pleasing song off the album, but this song has the sauce and we’re going to make it a real nice sauce for you”. Sometimes the joke would be him barking like a demonic animal. The crowd would bark back at him in delight and the next song would start, as if it were all totally normal behavior. It doesn’t take long watching Gerard to see that he is the weird freaky kid he sings about, and you get the sense that he really does care for all the other outcasts in his audience. There were a lot of queer kids and couples at the Tacoma Dome that night, having the time of their life being seen in a like-minded community.

After a truly transcendent concert, the band came back on for an encore with a slight costume change. Gerard came back talking about how in their time off, they watched The Batman twice. “That Robert Pattinson is a pretty awesome guy.” he said before playing Vampire Money and Vampires Will Never Hurt You in an Edward Cullen shirt straight off the Hot Topic rack. Whether Vampire Money was always about Twilight or not is up for debate in my house, but the cheeky nod to our neighbors in Forks did not go unnoticed. To close the concert out on a more sincere note, most of the band left Gerard and touring keyboardist Jamie Muhoberac to perform Cancer in a single spotlight. At the end, Gerard gave an impassioned “Goodnight”, leaving us ears ringing and dripping with sweat to shuffle out into a stranger world than his.

CONNECT WITH MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

INSTAGRAM

SPOTIFY

Listen

INSTAGRAM

We couldn’t be more stoked to have Suriel Hess as our new headliner for our upcoming LA show 🤩 🫶 Not gonna lie, us & Notorious Noise kinda went OFF with this line up & you’re not gonna wanna miss it - ticket link in bio 🎫