New York Timess Christopher R. Weingarten has noted that The Black Parade inspired a number of 2010s musicians in different genres, including Twenty One Pilots, Crown the Empire, Famous Last Words, Halsey, fun, Billie Eilish and Post Malone, and even influenced the sound of movie musicals like Frozen II. In 2016, Nylon wrote that the record "took the idea of a concept album and exploited it for the digital age", while being musically a rock opera "as ambitious as any post-Queen rock opera could be". Speaking on the band's reception and criticism during the early 2000s, NPR Music wrote that, "at a moment when mannered indie-pop and roughshod garage-rock were infiltrating the mainstream, [the band] was earnest, dramatic and unapologetically massive, in a way that made it conspicuously uncool," and deemed The Black Parade a "defining album" for a generation of pop-punk fans. In 2020, Kerrang! deemed the band "the rock superstars of the 21st century" while stating that "no other band has had such a musical or cultural impact over recent years." The magazine also noted their influence in "the current music scene" of alternative rock. Vice named My Chemical Romance the "artist of the decade", with writer Hannah Ewens commenting that they "influenced rock throughout the 2010s—even though they were inactive for most of the decade." In Paste magazine, Eli Enis wrote that "it is pretty much accepted canon at this point that My Chemical Romance are one of the most significant rock bands this side of the millennium." James McMahon of The Independent stated that Gerard Way "set a blueprint for emo's image of pale face, raven-black hair and perhaps a red tie, for almost 20 years." Writing on the band's influence, Entertainment Weeklys Kyle Anderson stated that they "offered up spiritual solutions to real problems, and they did it with huge riffs and big theatrical stage shows, with rarely a hint of irony or detachment... it's unlikely there will ever be a band quite like them again." LGBT community In Archer, Vince Ruston commented on the band's popularity in the queer and LGBT communities: "My Chemical Romance wanted to speak to and raise up every person who had ever felt outcast, downtrodden, or alienated. Queer teens were a huge part of that demographic". Similarly, Michelle Hyun Kim described Gerard Way as a "queer icon" in Them, and that "after the band announced their reunion on Halloween