Twenty Years of The Black Parade: My Chemical Romance Celebrate Their Cult Classic Album. Could a New Record Be on the Way?
American rockers My Chemical Romance are celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Black Parade. And this won't be just any ordinary anniversary celebration – the band have decided to mark the occasion with an expanded reissue of what may well be the most important album of their career.
The reissue will be released on October 23 via Reprise Records, part of Warner Music Group. Alongside the original album, it will feature six bonus tracks: three live recordings and three rare studio B-sides.
The live recordings come from the band's legendary intimate show for just 200 people at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey. A recording of the concert was later released on the The Black Parade Is Dead! DVD. The three tracks included on the anniversary edition are Dead!, The Sharpest Lives and Someone Out There Loves You – a song that was never officially released under that title and has long been known among fans as Stay.
The trio of studio bonus tracks consists of fan favourites Heaven Help Us, Kill All Your Friends and My Way Home Is Through You. While all three have been released separately before, the band have brought them together as part of this anniversary collection.
"Twenty years ago, we wrote what would become The Black Parade, our third record and the follow-up to Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. At the time, we could never have imagined what the record would mean for the band. All we knew was that we had made something crazy, something we couldn't wait to put out into the world," the band say. "Today, twenty years on, we celebrate its release. For the first time, we have included everything we finished during those sessions in a single collection."
The band also asked James Jean to revisit the world of The Black Parade and create three brand-new pieces of artwork. The result is a new series of illustrations featuring some of the iconic characters associated with the album.
"We hope you enjoy this collection of music and illustrations as much as we do, because we wanted to honour how timeless and enduring you've allowed it to become," the band add.
The anniversary reissue can be pre-ordered physically via the band's official website in CD, cassette and several vinyl LP formats, including a special audiophile edition featuring a laser-etched hologram. Signed copies of the physical releases were also made available for pre-order, but the quantities were clearly limited – CDs, LPs and cassettes sold out within the first few minutes after pre-orders opened. There is also plenty of anniversary merch up for grabs, including T-shirts, pins, a cap and even a special cross-stitch kit featuring the iconic skeleton Pepe, the album's mascot.
The band are currently wrapping up the final dates of their 20th-anniversary celebrations as part of the The Black Parade 2026 World Tour. During these shows, My Chemical Romance perform the entire album from start to finish, accompanied by actors dressed in the iconic marching uniforms associated with the era.
At the band's major show in San Antonio on September 12, 2026, frontman Gerard Way also publicly confirmed for the first time that My Chemical Romance are planning to make a new album. "We've always wanted to make another record. You guys have kept us alive for so long that you deserve another record. We'd like to make one soon."
For now, all that remains is to hope these words turn into something tangible and that My Chemical Romance will actually begin work on their first new full-length album in sixteen years. And, if we're patient enough, perhaps one day we'll get to welcome them back for another live show here in the Czech Republic, too.
Šári
