Editor’s note: My Chemical Romance denied the Current’s request to photograph its set, but the band’s team said it would send along its own shots. Once we receive those, we will include them with this review. Photos of the crowd and the Mars Volta are by Jaime Monzon.

Legendary emo rock band My Chemical Romance brought its classic album The Black Parade to life in front of a packed house at San Antonio’s Alamodome on Saturday night.

The show featured an elaborate production that rivaled the ambition of Pink Floyd’s The Wall or David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars — in both scope and theme. And that’s not even mentioning the music, which featured not just a complete performance of The Black Parade but also other gems from the band’s catalog.

My Chemical Romance formed in New Jersey immediately after 9/11, a tragedy that inspired frontman Gerard Way to change the course of his own life. The band, considered “emo,” falls into a long line of music stretching from pioneering acts such as Rites of Spring through Sunny Day Real Estate, Drive Like Jehu, At the Drive-In and the Promise Ring. 

The sound of emo has gradually become more accessible, culminating in MCR and its brand of stadium punk.

After all, you can’t draw a crowd of more than 50,000 people playing unlistenable noise.

And speaking of people, the crowd certainly added to the show. If you like concerts for the fashion show, Saturday’s hit the sweet spot. The female-skewing crowd featured any number of attendees sporting colorful goth and alt threads and makeup. 

MCR took care to set up the environment from the beginning, projecting surreal imagery associated with the band on onstage screens the second the crowd was let in. These elements combined gave a feeling of being transported to Draag, the fictional dystopia of The Black Parade. 

But before listeners took the journey to Draag, El Paso’s the Mars Volta treated them to what must be the most out-there, cutting-edge music ever played in a stadium. The band features singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, formerly of the previously mentioned At the Drive-In, a key influence on MCR.

The Mars Volta brings it in a completely different way, however. The group’s music would fall under the umbrella of progressive rock, but in that genre’s original spirit of exploration rather than trying to emulate the technical dexterity of Yes or Dream Theater. 

Driven by a relentless beat, the Mars Volta combines elements of Latin music, jazz fusion and punk into a mix that somehow sounded like none of those things. The performance highlighted songs from the band’s most recent release, Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio, in which the tracks blend into one long suite. 

The act took this same approach on Saturday night, weaving songs from its varied back catalog seamlessly with more recent material. 

The Mars Volta hit the stage with “Viscera Eyes” from 2005’s Amputechture and closed with “Interiatic ESP” from its classic 2003 debut, Deloused in the Comatorium. Bands with cult followings such as MCR are notoriously difficult to open for, but a fair number of crowd members seemed to know the material and the majority listened intently even if they didn’t. 

You have to credit MCR fans on that one, given the complexity of The Mars Volta’s material. 

But the throngs came for MCR, and you could tell from the deafening roar when the lights went down. A dictatorial rally kicked things off, including Draag’s “national anthem” sung on the B-stage. Actors portrayed many parts, and Way revealed during an emotional thank you at the end of the show that one was none other than metal legend King Diamond, who guested for the evening. 

Way took center stage for MCR — both literally and figuratively — and led the audience on a tour of Draag, which bears a strong resemblance to the old Soviet Union. The Black Parade may be 20 years old, but its themes of authoritarianism have aged well — unfortunately.  

It was easy to see the charismatic frontman as the leader of a cult of personality like …  well, you know. Luckily, he got his at the end. Some members of the audience may have cringed to see an old-school dictator replaced by a guy who can hold a stadium full of fans in the palm of his hand. 

MCR’s stage production featured not just actors but also video screens projecting band members and imagery related to the album. Way knows how to build a world, as shown by his creation of The Umbrella Academy, the basis of the popular Netflix series. By the end, fire reached the roof of the Alamodome and engulfed the stage as fireworks dialed things up to 11. 

The music itself pulled from some of the same sources as the imagery. It had two basic modes: an accessible, emo-sheened punk style that rolled in a Clash-like swagger and a more pensive mode that recalled David Bowie’s “Life On Mars?” The crowd sang their hearts out on massive hits like “Welcome to the Black Parade,” “Teenagers” and “Famous Last Words.”

After The Black Parade, the band members changed out of their goth Sgt. Pepper uniforms and moved to the B-stage in the center of the venue. Under white light, the band tore through nine more nuggets from their catalog, including “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na),” “Surrender the Night” and the show-closing “The Foundations of Decay.”

That last song in particular showed the genius of MCR. It combined a verse that was almost Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home” before launching into a ripper of a chorus reminiscent of something from fellow emo survivors Thursday. A little bit sing-along emo punk, a little bit arena rock.

And for thousands of attendees on Saturday night, that combo hit all the right notes. The show ended after a sweaty, emotional two-and-a-half hours. It’s hard to imagine anyone left unhappy.