On a night when Ed Sheeran's three-night takeover of the Principality Stadium was dominating headlines, another Cardiff stadium was being packed out to a wholly different crowd.
A sea of black T-shirts and brightly coloured hair flooded Sophia Gardens cricket ground, as fans eagerly arrived to see New Jersey emo rockers, My Chemical Romance, as well as their top-billed support act - Wales' own Funeral For A Friend. Once through the huge queues to get inside, the space around the stadium was filled with food trucks, merch stands and bars, giving the whole place a real mini-festival feel on a sunny evening in Cardiff.
Along with Funeral for a Friend, My Chemical Romance were also supported by Lost Alone and Star Crawler. It was the Bridgend rockers however that really got the crowd going for the main event with an energetic set that included fan favourites Juneau , Rookie of the Year , Street Car and Roses for the Dead . You can get more music news and other story updates by subscribing to our newsletters here.
Now, if you had told the 15-year-old me that I'd be going to see My Chemical Romance, 15 years after I first saw them at Cardiff's then-CIA, I might have cracked a half-baked smile through my giant emo fringe. If you told me I'd be seeing them twice in a week, I'd have probably snapped the eyeliner pencil I was holding through sheer excitement. And as chance would have it, that's exactly what happened. I'd booked tickets to see The Black Parade stars pre-pandemic, when they announced a show in Milton Keynes. They hadn't been to the UK in some time, so I decided the travelling was worth the nostalgia hit. I say nostalgia; their CDs are still regularly played in my car (yes, my old car still plays CDs).
When I then heard the band were heading to Cardiff, having still not seen them in Milton Keynes yet due to the pandemic, I was a little irked that I had to travel to see them. I went to the English show anyway. And then when I was offered tickets to see them again, a week later, the inner-15-year-old emo in me just couldn't refuse. So that's how I ended up seeing them twice in just over seven days. And it was worth it.
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The Cardiff show was slightly different to the one in Milton Keynes. It was a bit more stripped back, and ever-so-slightly less theatrical - lead singer Gerard Way didn't arrive on stage with a bandage around his face, like he did at the MK Stadium, for example. But the performance was just as incredible. It feels weird saying they played all the classics, as if 2007 was a long time ago. But it is, and that's the reality, these songs are classics to the fans who grew up with these songs.
They opened with their new track, Foundations of Decay , and despite only being released a few weeks ago, the crowd were already singing the words back at the band. Ever the showman, singer Way captivated the crowd with passionate performances, as he belted out all the favourite emo anthems, which saw him writhing on the floor one minute and jumping around the next.
Way's theatrics and vocals, combined with lead guitarist Ray Toro's familiar - and technically brilliant - riffs, the show was a nostalgia smack to the face that shows the band still packs a punch.
Throughout the show there was was talk of a love for Wales and seeing old friends - bassist Mikey Way even donned a Wales football shirt sporting a big number 11 on the back - while a few questionable chants from the crowd rang out, aimed at another performer who happened to be in the city on the same night.
With crowd-pleaser after crowd-pleaser, the band pulled out tracks from all of their albums: Thank You For The Venom , You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison and Famous Last Words were personal highlights for me. They finished with Sleep and came back for an encore of I'm Not Okay - by which point the crowd was singing so loudly you could barely hear Gerard Way through the voices singing back at him.
Overall, between mosh pits and mini-festival vibes, the whole evening was perfect for MCR fans, old and new. On a warm night in Cardiff, while a global popstar was causing traffic chaos, a few blokes from New Jersey proved there's still big love for emo in Wales. Five Stars.
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