The Black Parade Turns 20: How My Chemical Romance Imagined Death as a Parade

A man is dying of cancer in a hospital bed. When the end comes, death doesn’t appear as a dark figure but as his fondest childhood memory: the day his father took him to watch a marching band go by. Twenty years ago, My Chemical Romance took that image and built the album that changed their lives.

The Black Parade came out in October 2006: on the 23rd in Europe and the 24th in the United States. And this week it did something it hadn’t managed in two decades: it reached No. 1 in the UK for the first time.

A concept album in a house that gave them the creeps

The band formed in New Jersey in September 2001. Singer Gerard Way said that watching the Twin Towers fall was what pushed him to start it. Five years later, already famous, they decided to make something far bigger than a collection of songs.

They recorded it between April and August 2006, mainly at the Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles, with producer Rob Cavallo. It was a hard stretch: the band described the house as an unsettling place, Gerard Way said he suffered night terrors, and his brother, bassist Mikey Way, fell into depression and alcoholism.

Out of that came the story of “The Patient,” the protagonist, with characters such as Mother War, Fear and Regret. On the song “Mama,” Mother War is voiced by none other than Liza Minnelli.

Two No. 2s, and a No. 1 that took 20 years

“Welcome to the Black Parade” came out as a single on September 12, 2006, and became their first No. 1 in the UK, as well as their best showing in the United States: No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. The video, directed by Samuel Bayer, shows the Patient being led by the band toward the afterlife, and in 2017 MTV viewers voted it the greatest video of the 21st century.

The album fell one step short. It debuted at No. 2 in the United States, behind the Hannah Montana soundtrack, and at No. 2 in the UK, behind Robbie Williams’s Rudebox. Even so, it sold millions: it is four times platinum in the United States and also went gold in Chile.

On the 2007 tours, the band took the stage as a different group, one called “Black Parade,” in black uniforms. They killed off that character on October 7, 2007, in Mexico City. In 2013 My Chemical Romance announced their breakup, and on October 31, 2019, the same date as today, they announced they were coming back.

The parade keeps marching

The anniversary is being celebrated live on the Long Live The Black Parade tour, which kicked off on July 11, 2025, in Seattle. On that tour, the band takes the stage as The Black Parade, the official band of the dictator of Draag, an invented authoritarian country. They played Chile on January 28 and 29, 2026, at the Estadio Bicentenario de La Florida, with The Hives as guests, almost 18 years after their previous visit. Now the tour enters its final stretch through Asia: it starts on November 7 in Incheon, South Korea, and closes on the 22nd in Jakarta.

My Chemical Romance is part of Leveling Radio’s programming. And this album about death turned out to be the most alive thing the band has ever made: twenty years on, the parade keeps marching.