Sometimes, when you least expect it, the opening note of "Welcome to the Black Parade" catches your ear in the dead of night. Last night (November 11) was one such incidence, when My Chemical Romance set terminally online elder emos ablaze by posting a cryptic new graphic on the band's official Instagram account.
"If you could be anything, what would you be?" the caption read — and naturally, people got to speculating what all of this could possibly mean.
After breaking up in 2013, MCR announced a reunion tour in January 2020 that sold out within hours of tickets going on sale. Obviously the pandemic happened, so those dates were postponed more than once before the tour actually got to happen — complete with merch featuring one fan's iconic tramp stamp — in 2022, when they also released their first new song since 2014. Last year, rumours began circulating, suggesting that a new album might be in the works — and the ante was only upped when MCR were announced as When We Were Young headliners shortly thereafter.
Things have been awfully quiet since, though. Until now! It's been 14 years since the band's last album, Danger Days, was released, and fans on Reddit seem to think that, instead of a brand-new record, the mysterious graphic the band posted might be hinting at the release of their scrapped final album before their breakup, The Paper Kingdom. Bandleader Gerard Way said in a 2013 (pre-breakup) interview with Kerrang! that six songs were already completed for the Danger Days follow-up. Following MCR's dissolution, Way revealed the album's title and opened up about the concept in another interview.
The posted image of confetti falling atop a black-and-white, haze-filled city skyline features three symbols transposed over it. Internet sleuths have discovered that translating the initials of The Paper Kingdom — TPK — from English to Russian gives you ТПК, which are rotated versions of the characters in the graphic, arranged backwards.
However, other fans on r/MyChemicalRomance seem to think it might be a tour announcement. Until time tells, we'll carry on.