Gig Review: My Chemical Romance At Wembley Stadium

Ninety thousand voices, enough fire to rival the sun and a reminder of why I fell in love with live music in the first place.

On the 24th of March 2007, a 14-year-old emo went to see My Chemical Romance at the Manchester MEN Arena. Nearly 20 years later, that same emo got the golden opportunity to relive one of his most formative concerts. That emo was me.

There are a lot of bands I've made my whole personality over the years, with The Strokes probably being the main culprit. It’s interesting though, because I think when you see a band you love when you’re young and they’re in their prime, everything that comes afterwards never quite lives up to it. Or maybe it does. Maybe The Strokes are a bad example because they can be pretty messy when they want to be. But seeing them at All Points East a few years ago really made me think “The Strokes really aren’t that cool anymore”. All the phones came out for ‘Last Night’ and there was barely any movement in the crowd. Everyone seemed to be there to film a TikTok, not enjoy the band.

I think because of shows like that I’ve become strangely protective of certain memories. Radiohead are another good example. I saw them when I was 15 at Leeds Festival and I've had very little desire to see them again. That performance was so formative I don't think seeing them again could top it. Seeing them again would only diminish my memories of it, like it did with The Strokes. Sometimes it’s better to leave things exactly where they belong. So going to see My Chemical Romance, close to two decades after I last saw them live, had me nervous yet unbelievably excited. Fortunately I was right to be excited, because what a show it was.

As music journalists we get the lovely privilege of seeing artists for free in exchange for never making any money and selling our souls to the music industry. But if there was ever a gig that made it all feel worthwhile, this was it.

I haven’t seen a band in years that blew me away quite like My Chemical Romance did on Friday night, and I was lucky enough to see Gorillaz and The Cure this time last week. Few concerts carry this much emotional weight, both for me and the ninety thousand people packed into Wembley Stadium. It felt like the world’s biggest therapy session. Ninety thousand people screaming out everything they’d been carrying around for the best part of twenty years. Going to a show like this reminds you what a truly great live band can do. The entire audience knew every single word. At times you could barely hear Gerard Way over the deafening chorus of thousands of eternal emo kids screaming their hearts out.

The production itself had absolutely everything. A grand theatrical performance of The Black Parade in full, just like the show I saw at the MEN Arena when I was 14. A new storyline centred around a dystopian dictatorship called Draag. Fire. Fireworks. A stage on fire. A man on fire. Did I mention fire? The whole Draag concept felt like a timely swipe at the rise of authoritarian politics without ever getting in the way of the spectacle. It simply gave the songs another layer.

The world of Draag spilled far beyond the stage. Before the show, every audience member was handed a voting card bearing either 'Yea' or 'Nay', complete with a translation into the regime's fictional language. Later, four masked prisoners accused of rebelling against the state were marched before the crowd, who were instructed to decide their fate by raising their cards. The verdict was swift. A firing squad stepped forward and executed them, turning an arena full of My Chemical Romance fans into unwilling cogs in Draag's machinery.

The first half of the set was The Black Parade in its entirety and honestly, what an album. We don’t throw around 100/100 scores at Still Listening very often but this one absolutely deserves one. Some songs somehow became even bigger live. Hearing almost a hundred thousand people roar “When I was a young boy…” before those Queen-sized guitars crashed in made the hairs on your arms stand to attention. If the show had an emotional centre, it arrived with 'I Don't Love You' and 'Cancer'. For all the explosions, theatrics and arena-sized spectacle surrounding them, these were the moments that brought everything back down to a deeply human level.

'Teenagers' hit with far more bite than it does on record, shedding some of its polished sheen in favour of something looser and grimier. That bluesy swing lurking beneath the song's stomping riff came to the surface, giving it a swagger that owed as much to 50s rock 'n' roll as modern punk. ‘Mama’ became a full theatrical production thanks to opera singers Lucy Joy Altus and Charlotte Kelso, while ‘Famous Last Words’ ended the first act in spectacular fashion, the pyrotechnics growing more ridiculous with every chorus before that final, cathartic “I see you lying next to me.”

Once 'Famous Last Words' came to a close, the theatrics were dialled up another notch. Gerard Way was confronted by the ghostly figure Columbina, who plunged a knife into his chest, sending blood spraying across the stage in a perfectly timed nod to the album's hidden track, 'Blood'. As the song played, Columbina danced around Way's lifeless body, turning one of The Black Parade's deep cuts into one of the night's most memorable visual moments.

The second half brought the band onto a much smaller circular stage in the middle of the crowd. Opening with ‘I’m Not Okay (I Promise)’ felt biblical. If aliens had been hovering over Wembley that night, they probably would’ve accepted Gerard Way as the divine entity that he is. From there the band dipped further into the catalogue, pulling out deep-cuts and giving longtime fans plenty to shout about.

They dedicated ‘Na Na Na’ to Colleen Atwood, esteemed costume designer who was responsible for the band’s marching band attire for The Black Parade era as well as the videos for ‘Helena’ and ‘The Ghost of You’. ‘Helena’ itself, complete with its immortal “So long and goodnight”, served as the penultimate song and honestly would’ve been the perfect ending. Instead, the night closed with a newly reimagined version of ‘Demolition Lovers’, complete with piano and strings, making its tour debut.

Gerard Way, now just a year shy of 50, somehow appeared to have barely aged in the two decades since I first saw My Chemical Romance. More importantly, he hasn't lost an ounce of the ferocity, charisma or command that made him such a magnetic frontman back in 2007.

What surprised me most wasn't how good the band were. It was how easily they transported me back to being 14 years old. Back to my old friend Laura introducing me to My Chemical Romance, painting my nails black and screaming every word for two straight hours at that show in Manchester. By the time we were driving back to Hartlepool, she'd completely lost her voice. Tonight, it was my own that became a whisper.

To some extent, I think The Black Parade is one of the last big rock albums to really make a statement while also reaching the masses. It's remarkable how enduring its legacy has been, seemingly more relevant now than ever before. Music journalism has a funny way of sanding off the parts of yourself that made you fall in love with music in the first place. This show gave me all of that back.

Long live The Black Parade.

Photography By: Matty Vogel and Bryce Hall