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Manchester Evening News

Entertainment

Joe Goggins

My Chemical Romance in Warrington (not Manchester despite what Gerard Way kept saying) - Review and gig pictures

Gerard Way My Chemical Romance Manchester Warrington

We’re twenty minutes in to My Chemical Romance’s northern comeback, at Warrington’s Victoria Park. Although frontman Gerard Way has already addressed the crowd as ‘Manchester’ four times.

He means well. The show is happening equidistant of Manchester and Liverpool for logistical reasons; there’s already an outdoor stage in place in the park, ahead of the Neighbourhood Weekender. Plus, he looks as if he’s stopped off in the Northern Quarter along the way; he takes the stage in the kind of waxed raincoat he might have picked up from Oi Polloi.

That, in itself, is instructive. My Chemical Romance won the hearts of a generation of teenagers, and the ire of the right-wing press, with high-level emo theatrics, dressed in faded black-and-silver military regalia when they toured their mainstream breakthrough The Black Parade, and top-to-toe leather when they hit the road in support of their underrated farewell album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.

But, tonight, in front of a crowd of approximate 25,000, they just look like themselves. “It was different, this time,” says Way, early on, of the rehearsals that led up to the tour. “We felt like a band again.”

Gerard Way and guitarist Ray Toro embrace (Vicky Pearson)

That statement meets with a massive cheer, but, fourth time unlucky, his repeated suggestion that this is Manchester does not. There are boos from the Scouse contingent. “We’ve got an IKEA!” comes one proud shout from a local.

“But Manchester’s right here,” protests Way. “I even wrote it." He gestures to Jarrod Alexander’s kick drum, which carries the logo ‘I Heart MCR’; which could of course mean My Chemical Romance or Manchester, but we’ll assume the latter, given last weekend’s poignant anniversary.

Not that the mix-up really matters. New music, and a genuinely fresh creative foundation on which for the group to build, is already in motion; they open tonight with the softly epic The Foundations of Decay, their first new single in eight years.

Gerard scrawls "I heart MCR" on the drumkit (Vicky Pearson)

Elsewhere, there’s a sense of them picking up where they left off when they decided to call it quits in 2013. Danger Days, a pop-rock opus that split opinion at the time, is well represented, from the anthemic The Only Hope for Me Is You to the panoramic fist-pumper ‘S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W’.

This is an album they still believe in, where it might have been easier to flood the setlist with tracks from The Black Parade or their 2004 emo classic, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. Not that this epic set, which runs past two hours, skimps on those albums, either.

Welcome to the Black Parade sparks the first mass singalong; it is Bohemian Rhapsody with more eyeliner. Give ‘Em Hell, Kid still fizzes with freewheeling punk energy. There’s room, too, for inward reflection, not least on an especially raw Cancer.

Gerard Way - with "Let's Go" on the palm of his hand (Vicky Pearson)

Way, meanwhile, is in sentimental mood. He has lost none of his star power, prowling the massive stage in the style of the seasoned frontman, even after a decade of making music, outside of the band, better suited to smaller venues.

He pays tribute, mid-set, to Johnny Phillips, the Manchester promoter who put on the group’s first gig here, at the Night & Day Café. “There were, like, 50 people there, maybe 80,” he says. “But they were stoked!”

Click or swipe below for a gallery of photos from My Chemical Romance's gig at Victoria Park

He talks, too, about his past struggles with touring, and how much more of an emotional balance he’s finding on the road these days, even as he’s dedicating the magnificent ‘Teenagers’ - one of the most relentlessly catchy pop-punk tracks in memory - to his daughter, Bandit, who herself turned 13 today.

And, in the main, this is a celebration; of the fact that, as a quick scant of the crowd would tell you, this is a band that have retained the adolescent fanbase they had at their peak. Now all in their twenties and thirties, and picked up the next generation, too, with the operatic emo sweep of their back catalogue speaking for them even as they weren’t active as a group.

Fans at the My Chemical Romance gig (Vicky Pearson)

“I just noticed that there’s a carnival over there,” says Way, gesturing towards the on-site amusement rides. It comes shortly before the band close with the thunderous, exposed-nerve intensity of ‘I’m Not Okay (I Promise)’.

“No, my friends: you are at the fucking carnival!” He promises to see us again “before we’re 50.” My Chemical Romance are back.