Frank Iero and the Future Violents - Heaven Is A Place, This Is A Place EP
Frank Iero and the Future Violents have released a new EP called Heaven Is A Place, This Is A Place, and I love it. I wasn’t planning on writing this review for you today but after listening to the EP how could I not?
The Future Violents is Frank Iero’s third ‘solo’ band and is a band he calls his “dream lineup”. The line up consists of himself, Evan Nestor (the cellebration, The Patience), Tucker Rule, (Thursday) Kayleigh Goldsworthy (The Scarlet Ending, Dave Hause, solo work) and Matt Armstrong (Murder By Death). And yes, this band sound so good together. They released an album together in 2019 called Barriers which was a slightly different album for Frank Iero but it worked because of who was involved and what they were bringing to the album as well. I wasn’t expecting to hear more from The Future Violents as Iero usually changes his band line ups and band names for every new album, but I’m so glad we had more.
Before the release we had two of the four songs on the EP, Sewerwolf and a cover of REM’s Losing my Religion, which is something I have been waiting for to have a proper release for so long. The cover of Losing My Religion was originally recorded for the BBC in Maida Vale a few years ago and I have been listening to a version that someone uploaded to YouTube since then. It’s so captivating, the vocals on that track sound incredible from both Iero and Kayleigh Goldsworthy. You can hear the emotion in the song and I am so happy that it finally got a proper release, so more people can hear it.
Sewerwolf was a song named by Iero’s eight year old son when he asked him what it should be called. He has since said he’s not sure what a Sewerwolf is, but the name seemed cool and so he used it. This is on the harder side of The Future Violents music but I still love it. The guitars sound amazing and I love the tone on them, paired with the aching vocals from Iero and the heavy bass it’s just euphoric. The song is said to have come from pretending to write for someone else and the kind of lyrics that would go with that, but after working on it the band decided to keep it. I must say though that I wasn’t completely captivated on my first listen, so I encourage you to give it another try if you aren’t sure.
That leaves us then with the two songs we hadn’t heard before. The first song is Violence, this also opens the EP. It opens with great energy and a catchy guitar riff, drawing you into the EP completely. I have to say the vocals across this whole EP sound incredible, the usual drawl of Iero but with more of a clean tone. I think the vocal performance in this song is fun and perhaps more dynamic than usual, it’s a great addition to the riffing guitars underneath. I also like that we hear more of Kayleigh Goldsworthy and Evan Nestor here too. This song has a chorus that will get stuck in your head.
This will also go down well live and hopefully at some point we will be able to hear it, but who knows, as the pandemic is still at large and getting all the band members on the same schedule for a tour will be hard after this as they are all already working on new projects and of course Iero going back to My Chemical Romance (not that I’m complaining about that at all). I think it would be cool if they did a livestream show though, Tucker Rule and Frank Iero have already done some together with Thursday so I think it could be a possibility.
The last song on the EP, Record Ender, is epic. I was hooked straight away from the strumming guitar and I knew this was the song that would make me want to write this review. The opening riff is emotional and this with the piano behind it is just incredible. I urge you to listen to this song if nothing else from this EP. The lyrics here are heartbreaking and vulnerable and it’s everything you’d want from The Future Violents without knowing it. If this is the last song we get from them I won’t be mad as this is the ending they deserve. It shows everything they’re good at without being too much.
This EP has the right balance of heaviness and distortion mixed with melody for me, it’s refining what the Future Violence sound is mind in with more old school Frank Iero music. I also love the crossover it has in genre between the usual more drawling emo and punk but still with indie vibes that I think comes with the mix of band members.
This EP is just stunning to me, I believe it was recorded at the same time as Barriers but I’m not sure if it was recorded with the intention of being separate or not. These songs fit together really well but I don’t think they would have on Barriers, which makes me think this is intentional. Also these songs are too good to be off cuts from that album. The songs were written in Iero's basement, where he has a studio setup for recording, and he talks about how everything flowed so naturally with this group of musicians and that he didn't want it to end. So who knows if we'll see more form The Future Violents or not, I'm not sure they know either.
What a way to start 2021.
I hope I have convinced you all to give ‘Heaven Is A Place, This Is A Place’ a listen, I will link it down below with all the other social media links. Remember you can also read my Deep Dive post about Frank Iero where I take a look at his solo work as a whole and talk about the different bands and the albums they have produced, I will leave that below as well.
Thanks for reading, until next time…
Listen to Heaven Is A Place, This Is A Place EP on Spotify here.
Follow Frank Iero on Spotify here.
Follow Frank Iero on Instagram here.
Read my Deep Dive post about Frank Iero here.
I recommend reading this interview that Frank Iero did with Kerrang! about this EP as it gives more of an insight to the songs and the writing process.
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Follow me on Spotify here.
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