My Chemical Romance are marking 20 years of The Black Parade with an expanded reissue landing 23 October via Reprise Records, and for once ‘expanded’ isn’t just marketing language: it comes with six previously scattered or unreleased tracks finally gathered in one place.
Three of the additions are B-sides (‘Heaven Help Us’, ‘Kill All Your Friends’, ‘My Way Home Is Through You’), and three are live recordings taped at a 200-capacity show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken back in October 2007. The standout is ‘The Sharpest Lives’, which has only ever existed on the 2008 DVD The Black Parade Is Dead! and is now getting a proper streaming release for the first time. The band summed up the thinking behind bundling it all together simply:
“For the first time, we have included everything we finished during those sessions in a single collection.”
The physical release leans hard into collector territory: a 2LP edition in multiple colourways, a laser-etched hologram vinyl with gatefold jacket, a strictly limited One Step vinyl pressed from the original analogue masters (7,000 copies), plus CD and cassette. There’s new artwork too: three fresh pieces from original cover artist James Jean, revisiting the album’s cast of characters two decades on.
The Black Parade turned a concept record about a dying cancer patient into one of the defining emo albums of its era, and this reissue reads as the band actually reckoning with that legacy rather than just repackaging it for a cash-in. As the band put it, reflecting on the record’s afterlife:
“Twenty years ago, we wrote what would become The Black Parade. At the time, we could never have imagined what the record would mean for the band.”
0 Comments