What has My Chemical Romance's Frank Iero been up to pre-reunion?

There's nothing more exciting today than the news that My Chemical Romance will be returning to New Zealand next year, but continuing our recap of all things MCR today, we are also celebrating all of Frank Iero's solo musical releases during the split of MCR, and all of the iterations of Frank Iero and the Future Violents (formerly frnkiero andthe cellabration and Frank Iero and the Patience)

In 2014, Iero released his debut solo album, 'Stomachaches', and spoke to us about playing every instrument except for drums: "Well I didn’t do it all at the same time! <laughs> It’s one of those things where when you are taking on a project like this, you have to do a lot of things out of necessity, and that was the thing - it was just me in a room, I would have these ideas, I would hear these things and I would need to figure out a way to create them. I ended up playing drums on ‘Joyriding’ - that’s the only song that I play live drums on, Jarrod Alexander does the rest of the drums on the record - and then I did the programmed electronic drums. I played all the stringed instruments and a little bit of piano on there - it’s daunting, but at the same time when you’re writing the stuff and no-one else is there coming in and playing other ideas, it’s interesting that nothing on the record didn’t come out of my head or my heart. That’s an interesting concept; it’s a great situation to be a part of - it’s either something you can be really proud of, or at the same time you’re like, "Oh shit, maybe I should’ve had someone else come in and come up with another idea." For some reason, a lot of songs stemmed from me playing bass, and I never really set up to do that, it just happened to be that way. So once the songs came from that track, then I really did need to do everything else. It was fun to explore."

Read the full interview here.

Watch the music video for 'joyriding' below:

Stream 'Stomachaches':

In 2016, Iero released his second solo album, 'Parachutes', which you can listen to below:

And this year, Iero released his third solo album, 'Barriers', which is below for you to stream:

P.S. In case you missed the news, My Chemical Romance are returning to New Zealand in March for a very special show - click here for all the info!