Against the Winds

Against the Winds is the fifth album, released by Frontiers on 9 February 2024. The line-up has not moved since the last one: Deen Castronovo (vocals and drums), Joel Hoekstra (guitar), Jeff Pilson (bass), with Alessandro Del Vecchio again producing and playing keyboards. It is the second record of the Mk II era and arrived barely ten months after its predecessor — a turnaround that is itself a property of the Frontiers method, where the songs are readied and the people are fitted to them. There are eleven tracks. The galloping title track opens, followed by “Changing My Mind” and “Fall on My Knees” — all three of which got videos. Through the weight of “Lost in Damnation,” the afterglow of “Will I See You Again” and the closing “No Turning Back,” the direction does not shift at all. For ears that want Journey gloss it lands directly, though some reviewers found it short of the previous record's impact and called it Journey on the cheap. Even so, the one thing that has never wavered across five albums is that Castronovo's voice is the whole of this project.