Judah & The Lion stopped by The Bobby Bones Show to talk about their new album, perform and more!
Judah & The Lion’s new album, The Process, is divided into the five stages of grief. The central theme of the new record is the process of grief, which front man Judah Akers found himself going through after his painful divorce. At the same time, a couple of people he was close to lost their life to suicide. He didn’t know how to grieve and ended up processing it through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Akers wanted a plan and system to heal his broken heart, but nothing was working. Once he dove into the reality of his feelings and worked towards getting to the forgiveness and acceptance point of what was going on in his story, that’s when he really started to heal. While writing the record he realized he was in his denial phase and didn’t even know it. Learning how to accept all these emotions at once was difficult for him so writing the record was healing.
They wrote three songs for each of the five stages. Akers found it hard to go back to those places sometimes and found himself angry while recording some vocals. Judah & The Lion have three different phases when they write music. Writing it is healing, recording comes with a lot of emotions and the aftermath is releasing and playing it live for people who connect with it. He felt like in a lot of ways that is how artists heal. Their goal for this record is if someone is going through their own version of grief they could listen to this album and see their experience and relate to it. The songs titled the stages of grief are instrumentals that help break up the album sections.
Although the central theme of the album is the process of grief, they still feel like there is an undertone of hope. They end the record in the acceptance section with happy songs. They hope this record has provided a roadmap for people going through their own process of the five stages of grief, and a reminder that there is no linear line to healing. Akers admitted that was the most frustrating part for him. He was looking for a step-by-step program to acceptance but learned that the truth about acceptance is learning how to hold all those emotions at once and be okay with it. Akers revealed he had chronic back pain for three years because he was repressing his emotions so much. He processed his anger and yelled at many people, and then his chronic back pain went away. Once he was able to get out all the rage that was inside of him, he was able to fully heal.
Judah & the Lion’s 2024 ‘The Process Tour’ kicks off October 3rd, tickets are on sale now. While in the studio, they performed their new song “Floating In The Night” and “Long Dark Night.” Watch below!