Frank Iero - Barriers (CD)

For Frank Iero, making music has always been a coping mechanism. But it's also much more than just a way of dealing with the hardships of life - it's a means of stepping back to take in the hurricane that is life, both in all it's glory and devastation and acknowledging the things you could, and maybe should, have done differently. Regret flows through Barriers, Iero's third solo record, more than anything he's ever made before. Made with his new band, The Future Violents, and recorded and mixed by Steve Albini, it's an album that directly and deliberately challenges the doubts that plague us, whether on a trivial, everyday basis or a more meaningful level. To that extent, it's fourteen songs are much more than a deeply existential journey into his heart and mind. They also reinvent who he is as a musician and tackle head-on the fundamental question of what it means to actually be alive, to be human.