My Chemical Romance have announced an expanded 20th anniversary reissue of ‘The Black Parade’. Check out the 2007 live recording of ‘The Sharpest Lives’ which has been made available to stream for the first time.
Set to arrive on October 23 via Reprise Records, the reissue of the four-times platinum album celebrates two decades since it first dropped, and includes the original tracklist alongside six bonus tracks.
Three of the bonus tracks are live recordings from the band’s gig at the 200-capacity Maxwell venue in Hoboken, where Gerard Way and co. played in October 2007. The other three are fan-favourite B-sides which were previously scattered across different releases – including never-before-released ‘Someone Out There Loves You’.
To celebrate the announcement of the 20th anniversary reissue, My Chemical Romance have today (Thursday September 10) dropped ‘The Sharpest Lives (Live from Hoboken)’, marking the first time it has been available to stream. Originally, the song was only available on the DVD portion of their 2008 live collection ‘The Black Parade Is Dead!’.
“Twenty years ago, we wrote what would become ‘The Black Parade,’ our third record and the follow up to ‘Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge’,” the emo icons shared. “At the time, we could never have imagined what the record would mean for the band. All we knew is that we had made something crazy, and something we couldn’t wait to get it out into the world.”
They continued: “Today, 20 years on, we celebrate its release. For the first time, we have included everything we finished during those sessions in a single collection,”, also adding that they asked James Jean, the artist behind the cover, to “to revisit the world of ‘The Black Parade’ and create three new pieces of art.”
“What he has crafted is a beautiful collection of a few iconic characters from the record during that era,” they added, also sharing the reimagined cover art. “James is truly a one-of-a-kind artist, and so important to how this record was presented to the world. We are extremely grateful for meeting him all those years ago, and agreeing now to make something new.
“Our hope is that 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 be. Thank you for marching with us. To the death!”
The reissue is available as a 2LP version, a 1LP edition hologram vinyl edition, and a One Step vinyl package which is limited to only 7,000 copies and was created using the original analogue master recordings.
Visit here to pre-order and for more information.
The Black Parade (20th Anniversary) tracklist is:
Original Album
1. ‘The End.’
2. ‘Dead!’
3. ‘This Is How I Disappear’
4. ‘The Sharpest Lives’
5. ‘Welcome To The Black Parade’
6. ‘I Don’t Love You’
7. ‘House of Wolves’
8. ‘Cancer’
9. ‘Mama (feat. Liza Minnelli)’
10. ‘Sleep’
11. ‘Teenagers’
12. ‘Disenchanted’
13. ‘Famous Last Words’
14. ‘Blood (A Brief Intermission)’
Bonus Tracks
‘Heaven Help Us’
‘Kill All Your Friends’
‘My Way Home Is Through You’
‘Dead! (Live)’
‘The Sharpest Lives (Live)’
‘Someone Out There Loves You (Live)’
MCR are currently on the road as part of their ‘Long Live The Black Parade’ anniversary tour. The show sees the band performing the classic emo album in full, before they play a second set on a B-stage in the middle of the venues.
Already they have played their UK and European leg of the tour, and are now underway with the North American dates, which have so far seen them play ‘The Light Behind Your Eyes’ for the first time live, as well as ‘Boy Division’ from 2013’s ‘Conventional Weapons’ EP, and a compilation of scrapped pre-‘Danger Days’ material. They dedicated the latter to late Every Time I Die guitarist and wrestler Andy Williams, who passed away recently after collapsing after a wrestling event in Pennsylvania.
Before then, the emo icons debuted ‘Bulletproof Heart’ for the first time in four years as they kicked off the North American leg of shows, and played another ‘Conventional Weapons’ track ‘AMBULANCE’ live for the first time ever at a recent gig in Glasgow.
They also played ‘Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back’, from 2010’s ‘Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys’, for the first time in nearly four years during their show at Anfield stadium before that.
NME gave My Chemical Romance’s Anfield concert a glowing five-star review, writing: “Shared glances between the band make it obvious how much fun is being had up there. With all of the energy concentrated to the small stage they strut around, they could get lost in the throng, but instead they command it. It’s an assured performance that highlights how much more is being offered here than pop-punk nostalgia, the grit of Way’s vocals always remaining the main attraction.”
Back when ‘The Black Parade’ was released, NME gave the record a glowing 9/10 review, praising it as a release that felt like it was going “to turn MCR into the biggest band on the planet”.
“This album has given them the freedom to do anything they want next, but for now this is one to file alongside ‘American Idiot’, ‘Doolittle’ and ‘Nevermind’ on your greatest US rock albums shelf,” it read. “Long live My Chemical Romance, the outrageously-camp, loud and righteous new kings of the world. Those bottle-chucking haters are just going to have to get used to it.”
