VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Rocker Frank Iero On His New Album ‘Barriers,’ Band The Future Violents

Rocker Frank Iero has a brand new album coming out May 31 named Barriers, and he thinks it’s his  “perfect storm” record.

The 37-year-old New Jersey native — best known as the backup vocalist and rhythm guitarist for the band My Chemical Romance — now has a band called Frank Iero and the Future Violents. He talked to uInterview exclusively about his latest music and the origins of his new solo project.

“If you’re a follower of the things that I’ve done in the past, I think the kind of cool thing is that you can expect to just be surprised and not really expect what’s coming,” Iero said of his new album. “This one is is definitely I think out of left-field a bit, it’s a lot of types of musical genres and topics that I’ve been chasing for a really long time and I tend to feel like songs are a bit like love affairs like sometimes. You meet people along the way and you’re like, ‘oh this could be really great but it’s not right now kind of thing,’ and it just felt like the right time to tackle a lot of this stuff. This is the perfect storm of a record.”

How did Iero come up with such a wildly unique name for his band? It almost came about unintentionally, the musician confessed.

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“It was kind of serendipitous to be honest,” he said. “The name stems from… I was on a flight and it was a flight through Australia we were landing in Sydney. I was actually the flight right before, I had a really crazy terrible accident about two and a half years ago, and the steward came up and was like, ‘oh you guys look like you’re in a band.’ And normally we’re like, “no, we’re just we’re traveling world culturalists,” but this time I was like “Yeah, yeah, we’re a band,” and he was like, ‘what’s the name of the band?’ I said, ‘Frank Iero and the Patience,’ and that’s the name of the band at the time and he misheard and he was like, ‘The Future of Violence.’”

Iero continued: “I was like “that’s amazing, I don’t know what that is but I got to write that down,” so I did and I didn’t know what that collection of words was, maybe it was a song title, maybe it was just something that inspired something else, but I started to think about what that meant to me as this band started to form.”

Iero then used a captivating metaphor to illustrate the choice between living an active life and a passive one, and of having the courage to take some initiative and influencing people to change the world, even if it means “disrupting” certain commonly accepted things.

“And the idea of kind of thinking about life as a pristine lake, you know what I mean,” he said. “Sometimes you can sit there and live passively, you know, moving vicariously through other people or other things that are happening, kind of watch the fish go underneath in and the wind kind of take the current, and that’s a passive way to just kind of observe life.”

He continued: “And then, I thought about how an active way would be to pick up a stone on the shore and toss it in — to disrupt everything in one swift violent action, almost like the idea of how do you leave a footprint, how do you create a ripple that that goes off and effects things and changes the world.”

Full our Frank Iero interview transcript:

Q: What can fans expect from your new album?

A: if you’re a follower of the things that I’ve done in the past, I think the kind of cool thing is that you can expect to just be surprised and not really expect what’s coming. This one is definitely I think out of left-field a bit, it’s a lot of types of musical genres and topics that I’ve been chasing for a really long time and I tend to feel like songs are a bit like love affairs like sometimes, you meet people along the way and you’re like ‘oh this could be really great but it’s not right now kind of thing,’ and it just felt like the right time to tackle a lot of this stuff, this is a perfect storm of a record. I got to work with musicians that I’ve been fans of and friends with, I mean we’ve known each other for close to 18-19 years now, and now it’s finally like all these people that I wanted to make records with called me up and we’re like ‘hey we’re free we want to do something,’ and it was like “oh wow I guess I got to write some songs.”

Q: What do you hope fans get from the album?

A: Well I tend to feel like the best kind of stuff comes when we’ve scared the heck out of ourselves you know. There are so many times in my life and I know probably a lot of other people out there that you think ‘Oh wouldn’t it be great if I did this or could do this but I can’t you know,’ ‘because it’s too scary or I don’t think I would succeed in doing that you know,’ I think failures is sometimes a scary thing for people. To me I think those are kind of the greatest moments of you know being vulnerable and attempting things that we never thought were possible, so I hope that people can hear me taking those leaps of faith and it inspires them to do the same, I hope they get scared enough to kind of go out there and and and tackle that elephant and in their room.

Q: How did you name the band?

A: It was kind of serendipitous to be honest, the name stems from, I was on a flight and it was a flight through Australia we were landing in Sydney, I was actually on the flight right before I had a really crazy terrible accident about two and a half years ago, and the steward came up and was like ‘Oh you guys look like you’re in a band,’ and normally were like “no, we’re just we’re traveling world culturalist,” but this time I was like “Yeah, yeah, we’re a band” and he was like ‘What’s the name of the band?’ I said, Frank Iero and the Patience, and that’s the name of the band at the time and he misheard and he was like ‘The Future of Violence.’ I was like “that’s amazing, I don’t know what that is but I got to write that down,” so I did and I didn’t know what that collection of words was, maybe it was a song title, maybe it was just something that inspired something else, but I started to think about what that meant to me as this band started to form.

And the idea of the kind of thinking about life as a pristine lake you know what I mean, sometimes you can sit there and live passively you know, moving vicariously through other people or other things that are happening, kind of watch the fish go underneath in and the wind kind of take the current, and that’s a passive way to just kind of observe life. And then, I thought about how an active way would be to pick up a stone on the shore and toss it in – to disrupt everything in one swift violent action, almost like the idea of how do you leave a footprint, how do you create a ripple that that goes off and effects things and changes the world. The idea is that the band and hopefully the people that are listening to this band are the future activists, the ones that go out and actively participate in life that kind of mess things up a little bit so that we can experience a greater change.