My Chemical Romance didn’t just revive “The Black Parade” in Phoenix when they brought those songs to life in all their fantastically overblown splendor on Sunday, Sept. 6, at Chase Field, a ballpark that’s rarely felt more like a night at the opera.
They staged a full theatrical production, treating that career-defining concept album as a starting point, introducing new characters played by costumed actors while addressing dystopian themes in a loosely scripted narrative set in the fictional nation of Draag, ruled by a character known as the Grand Immortal Dictator.
They also played the hell out of those songs, which clearly added to the magic, Gerard Way investing his vocal delivery with all the emotion it takes to make you feel what he’s feeling
while leading a ballpark full of fans in one spirited singalong after another.
How My Chemical Romance introduced 'The Black Parade' in Phoenix
After setting the tone for something much more upbeat than what ultimately happened by blasting Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky" as the concert was about to start, the stage was overrun with costumed characters as Way and his bandmates — bass-playing brother Mikey Way and guitarists Frank Iero and Ray Toro — strolled onstage in the marching band outfits of their dark Sgt. Pepper-esque alter-egos, the Black Parade.
As this was happening, the screen behind the stage filled with the image of an actor whose soothing voice greeted the crowd with “Hello, my friends and good morning. It is another beautiful day in Draag, a chance once more to get things right and push beyond our best.”
As he finished speaking, Charlotte Kelso, an opera singer whose nurse’s outifit was accessorized with an eyepatch and a militay cape, sang “Over Fields (The National Anthem of Draag).”
At the anthem’s conclusion, My Chemical Romance launched the album with a powerful rendition of “The End.,” the Bowie-esque waltz that welcomes listeners to “The Black Parade.”
It was quite the entrance, giving way, as it does on the album, to “Dead!,” an electrifying performance that saw the singer jumping up and down as it built to a rousing conclusion.
They could’ve just done that — played the album in full with the conviction and enthusiasm they displayed on those two songs — and every person in that ballpark would’ve gone home thinking they’d just seen a great performance of a classic album.
But this was so much more than that, underscoring both the raw emotion and the excess of “The Black Parade” in equal measure.
Long Live the Black Parade was an increasingly bizarre rock spectacle
The result was an increasingly exhilarating if bizarre rock spectacle that pulled out stops you never would’ve guessed existed on its way to an incendiary finish on a stage engulfed in flames with an over-the-top rendition of “Famous Last Words,” which ended in a hail of feedback followed by a gloriously understated reprise of that opening waltz.
Early in the set, a futuristic orb descended from the rafters with a giant eyeball on its screen and presented the members The Black Parade with diplomas, Way proclaiming “Success!” with a satisfied grin.
A short while later, the orb descended to present the singer with a severed head, which he carried around and sang to while maintaining the emotional intensity of “Cancer,” a song Way has been known to say was written with one simple goal in mind: to arrive at “the darkest song ever.”
The concert took an even stranger turn on “Mama,” a dark cabaret that originally featured amazing guest vocals by Liza Minnelli.
Ms. Minnelli did not fly to Phoenix to revisit her performance. But a man engulfed in flames did run across the stage in the course of a song that also featured a dagger-wielding Way interacting with a ventriloquist's dummy and drafting the opera-singing nurse with the eye patch to be his magician’s assistant.
“I know who you are!” he yelled with manic glee while pointing at the nurse. “You’re our assistant! And we’re magicians!"
Turning to the crowd, he said, "And you’re the audience! And we’re gonna cast a magic spell, right? She’s gonna let us make her disappear.”
There were no actual magic disappearing acts involved. Did the sign on the marquee say Twenty One Pilots? It did not. At the end of his countdown to the nurse’s disappearance, she just started singing the Minnelli part. But it did feel like magic all the same.
Long Live the Black Parade was all brilliantly staged and it rocked
The whole performance was brilliantly staged and they managed to work in all those elements, advancing the narrative, such as it was, without unduly sacrificing the momentum of the live performance. It’s a delicate balance but they found it.
It didn't hurt that Way was born to this, hamming it up to the hilt with personality to spare without breaking character.
His bandmates also brought their A-game to the ballpark, Toro tearing it up like a true guitar hero in service to music that effortlessly blurs the lines between the punk and emo scenes that spawned them, Brechtian cabaret and such ’70s classic-rock touchstones as Queen, Pink Floyd and “Ziggy Stardust”-era David Bowie.
At the conclusion of their presentation of “The Black Parade,” they left the stage, returning costume-free, Mikey Way rocking a T-shirt by one of Arizona’s most successful bands, The Maine, for a second set that found them crowding together on a much smaller satellite stage.
It’s the sort of thing that tends to lead to stripped-down versions of the main-stage action. And it was stripped down in terms of the production. But a lot of what they played was heavier than what we’d all just witnessed on the main stage.
Highlights ranged from “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” to the tour debut of “The Only Hope For Me Is You,” “Helena,” “Thank You For the Venom,” “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)” and the live debut of “The Light Behind Your Eyes,” the camera showing fans down front, many of whom were in costume and elaborate makeup, emoting along to every word.
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Jimmy Eat World do one for the local rock history books in Phoenix
Jimmy Eat World did not squander any stage time on theatrics in revisiting their own career-defining triumph, “Bleed American,” an album they’re been playing every night in its entirety on a 25th anniversary tour.
They had a row of lights behind them and a video projection of the trophies from the album art.
And that was all they really needed as singer-guitarist Jim Adkins, guitarist Tom Linton, bassist Rick Burch and drummer Zach Lind powered their way through the songs in succession with longtime touring member Robin Vining fleshing out their sound on keys and additional harmonies.
It was great to see them play to such a huge crowd in their own backyard, Adkins declaring it “one of the biggest shows we’ve ever done here” while Lind and Vining repped the city with their wardrobe choices — Lind in a Diamondbacks hat and a Jimmy Eat Word baseball jersey cleared based on a Diamondbacks jersey, Vining in a Carly’s Bistro T-Shirt.
The crowd was in their corner from the time they crashed the gate with “Bleed American,” the first of four hit singles from that timeless album.
Jimmy Eat World didn't feel like an opening act in Phoenix
Technically speaking, it wasn’t their show. But they had the crowd singing along to such obvious highlights as “The Middle” (a mainstream breakthrough that’s been streamed more than a billion times on Spotify), “A Praise Chorus” (their joyous ode to what it means to be a music fan) and “Hear You Me” (an emotional ballad that’s become one of their most beloved songs but was never a single).
If anything rivaled “The Middle” in terms of unadulterated audience enthusiasm, it was “Sweetness,” a modern-rock radio hit that has the added advantage of an audience participation trigger for the ages ("whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh").
They managed to bring the album in at just over 45 minutes, which allowed them to end their set of a crowd-pleasing high with “Big Casino,” “Work” and “Pain.”
At one point early in the set, Adkins thanked the headliners for inviting them to play the ballpark down the 202 from where they held their first rehearsals.
“Man, this is incredible,” he added. “This is probably one of the biggest shows we’ve ever done here in town.”
I’d have to think it was the biggest.
Later in the set, he talked about it being 25 years since the release of “Bleed American.”
“None of us could’ve imagined that it would turn into this,” he said of playing Chase Field for a crowd that large.
"And that so many people found something they connected in and stayed. It’s the biggest compliment to any musician or artist that someone takes the time to sit with a piece of work and make it theirs with their own life. It’s just… there’s so many other things you could do with your time. I just want to say we appreciate all of you so much.
It was a beautiful moment made sweeter by Gerard Way taking a moment during My Chemical Romance’s set on the satellite stage to say a few kind words.
“Every night, I have had the pleasure of thanking a band who has played with us here tonight on this tour and it’s been different every night,” he said. “And tonight, one of our all-time favorite bands collectively, Jimmy Eat World, played with us. We have a lot of (expletive) memories with those guys, from before we had a band, listening to their CDs, driving around.”
My Chemical Romance 2026 setlist: Long Live the Black Parade in Phoenix
These are the songs that made the setlist when My Chemical Romance arrived in downtown Phoenix, where their tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of “The Black Parade” played Chase Field:
- “Mr. Blue Sky” (Electric Light Orchestra, played from tape)
- “Over Fields (The National Anthem of Draag)” (Charlotte Kelso on live vocals over tape)
The Black Parade
- “The End.”
- “Dead!”
- “This Is How I Disappear”
- “The Sharpest Lives” (with "The Eye" intro)
- “Welcome to the Black Parade”
- “I Don't Love You” (with extended intro)
- “House of Wolves” (with unknown white noise intro)
- “Cancer”
- “Mama” (with "Dagger" outro)
- “Sleep” (with “The Big Sky” intro)
- “Teenagers”
- “Disenchanted”
- “Famous Last Words”
- “The End. (2026 reprise)”
- “Blood” (played from tape)
B Stage
- “Metastable” (Clarice Jensen song performed by Clarice Jensen)
- “I'm Not Okay (I Promise)”
- “Boy Division” (dedicated to Andy "The Butcher" Williams)
- “The Only Hope for Me Is You” (Tour debut)
- “My Way Home Is Through You”
- “Helena”
- “Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough for the Two of Us”
- “Thank You for the Venom” (with extended outro)
- “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)”
- “The Foundations of Decay”
- “The Light Behind Your Eyes” (with Kayleigh Goldsworthy, live debut)
Jimmy Eat World 2026 tour setlist: Bleed American Tour in Phoenix
These are the songs that Jimmy Eat World played at Chase Field as direct support for My Chemical Romance on Sept. 6, 2026.
Bleed American set
- “Bleed American”
- “A Praise Chorus”
- “The Middle”
- “Your House”
- “Sweetness”
- “Hear You Me”
- “If You Don't, Don't”
- “Get It Faster”
- “Cautioners”
- “The Authority Song”
- “My Sundown”
Act II
- “Big Casino”
- “Work”
- “Pain”
Ed has covered pop music for The Republic since 2007, reviewing festivals and concerts, interviewing legends, covering the local scene and more. He did the same in Pittsburgh for more than a decade. Follow him on X and Instagram @edmasley and on Facebook as Ed Masley. Email him at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: My Chemical Romance took rock spectacle to new extremes in Phoenix
