Performing: My Chemical Romance, Barns Courtney
Venue: Budapest / Budapest Park / Hungary
Date: Tuesday, 7 June 2022
My Chemical Romance, the defining band of the emo era for so many people in the early 2000s, reclaimed Budapest Park after a years-long break with a show that stirred up waves of intense nostalgia. The band — counted among the pioneers of the emo-alt-rock and post-punk explosion at the turn of the millennium — last played the Hungarian capital back in 2004. When years go by and interest in a genre fades, booking a band like this and expecting to break even feels optimistic at best, yet the band pulled it off without much trouble, filling the venue to the brim. The crowd hadn’t forgotten My Chemical Romance.
The crowd — dominated largely by women — was packed in front of the stage like dough in a pizza press. You could see all ages. Just when you think the mum standing next to her daughter is there purely for parenting duties, you notice that this lady, who must be pushing 60, is decked out in full band gear: the shirt, even the pants, the bag, the whole official merch package. The cross-generational fandom of My Chemical Romance might seem surprising at first glance — for this kind of music you’d expect nothing but screaming teenagers and young girls. But when you put it all in context, especially the fact that the band has been around for over 20 years, a crowd this colourful makes total sense.
First up — running about 20 minutes late — was British alternative and indie rock singer Barns Courtney, accompanied by his bandmates. By this point the crowd was already well warmed up, but the 30-minute high-energy set turned up the heat even further, complete with the singer taking a headfirst tumble during an attempted crowd surf. He came out in one piece, and Barns is no pushover. The show really hit its stride after the first ten minutes or so, especially when they launched into Glitter & Gold. That’s Barns’ first solo breakthrough track, and the song got extra recognition from its use in the promotional video for the film “The Founder” starring Michael Keaton. Barns and the crew put on a performance loaded with positive energy and sheer stage presence that left nobody cold.
Barns Courtney setlist:
1. London Girls
2. 99
3. Glitter & Gold
4. Hands
5. Fire
At 8:30 PM, My Chemical Romance walked out on stage. The screaming reached Huron-scale proportions — the collective roar literally drowned out the band themselves. The girls up front came armed with banners of all kinds, one of which read “Thank you for keeping me alive,” a heartfelt thank-you to the band for what their music has meant. With My Chemical Romance, that’s nothing out of the ordinary — the band constantly receives messages of gratitude from fans, and even from their parents, saying that the music was there for them through the toughest moments in life. Many people — and this is sadly also a real stigma attached to emo culture — credit the band’s songs with preventing suicides, not just among the fans themselves but among their close friends and family. That phenomenon is very likely the main reason why My Chemical Romance, after a long stretch away from touring and with barely any new material to show (a first new single had recently dropped — the first since 2013), still draws massive crowds to their current shows: we’re talking stadiums and large open-air venues across Europe. After an opening flirtation with the crowd, won over immediately by their elevated emo hairstyles, the guys kicked things off with the only song they’d created in the past decade — The Foundations of Decay. More of a ballad than anything else, it had already taken firm root with the audience by this point, and the crowd handled it like it had been around for twenty years.
The venue really started to boil over when My Chemical Romance moved on to the next song — one of their most recognisable hits, familiar even to people who’ve never listened to them or know them at all, thanks to its relentless saturation across radio airwaves. For Slovenian frequencies, the only comparable earworm would be the Star Wars franchise and its Disney overlord. We’re talking, of course, about I’m Not Okay (I Promise). Given the lyrics and the title alone you might expect the crowd to dial it back a bit, but of course that didn’t happen — people were going wild, singing along, and throwing themselves into the pushing and shoving. We even got a mosh pit going, which isn’t standard practice at emo-core shows. The energy just kept climbing, song by song, adrenaline surging by the minute, unstoppable. The flashpoints came hard: particularly Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) and Helena, and then in the encore, the absolute knockout blow of the closing Welcome to the Black Parade — the band’s best-known hit and the one that, in the grand finale, finally tore down whatever was left of the crowd’s inhibitions.
So — a return to the stage that delivered on every level. The fanbase is still there, still huge, still burning hot. The evergreen hits carry the band’s name and keep its reputation intact. There’s nothing to nitpick about the performance itself, and the sound was equally solid. Everything delivered at a high standard. The only thing the band actually needs right now is a new studio album.
My Chemical Romance setlist:
1. The Foundations of Decay
2. I’m Not Okay (I Promise)
3. It’s Not a Fashion Statement, It’s a Fucking Deathwish
4. Famous Last Words
5. Summertime
6. Vampire Money
7. Make Room!!!!
8. The Ghost of You
9. Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)
10. Teenagers
11. DESTROYA
12. Mama
13. Helena
14. Cancer
—encore—
15. Headfirst for Halos
16. Welcome to the Black Parade
The phenomenon known as My Chemical Romance still leaves a lot of people scratching their heads today. On one hand, the band’s most devoted fans rival only the kind of delirium that Backstreet Boys fans were living in during the nineties; on the other, the band represents a genuinely unique musical force — one that many people flat-out needed when they first came on the scene. More than anything, they’re a band that a lot of young music lovers took as their own because the lyrics gave them comfort and a way through personal struggles — especially the mental kind. With their unguarded openness about raw emotion, My Chemical Romance showed young people that it’s okay — and worth it — to speak up about your problems and hardships, to express your thoughts and feel things openly. Whatever you think of where emo sits in today’s musical landscape, the band’s positive impact on the generation that lived through their teenage years at the start of the new millennium is something that earns nothing but respect.
Since we’re already in the territory of emo culture in rock music, it’s worth shining a light on the campaigns that other bands have been running in recent years. One worth mentioning is the “It’s OK not to be OK” campaign, which works to help young people dealing with various mental health struggles — including anti-social disorders — to accept their condition and lean into it as part of who they are, building self-confidence and finding a sense of purpose and belonging in the world around them.
That campaign got its start in 2019, on a tour called “Never Say Die! (LINK TO THE REVIEW)“. All the bands involved have pledged that after the show, you can come to them with your problems and they’ll work together to help find a solution — or at least have a conversation. Just a few of the bands taking part: Parkway Drive, Crystal Lake, King 810, Alpha Wolf, Polar, Our Hollow, Our Home, In Hearts Wake, Great American Ghost, Killswitch Engage.
Author: Denis Paradiž
Photos: Denis Paradiž
