When alternative folk-rockers Judah & the Lion wrote their last batch of songs, the last thing on their minds was making an album that might save a few lives. But they wound up making one anyway.

The album is “The Process” which began as a chronicle of frontman Judah Akers’ divorce during the pandemic; soon afterward he lost two relatives including one to suicide. So the album is structured around the five Kubler-Ross stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — and airs plenty of dark sentiments before reaching an upbeat, life-affirming finish.

“There are already so many divorce records in the world, and I didn’t want to make another one,” Akers said this week. “Since the world didn’t need a heartbreak record, I wanted to tell the story in a way that would make it more authentic. Losing a relative within the same three-year span as the divorce, with mental health issues going on, gives you the sense of being out of control. You’re mad at them, and you’re sad for them at once. So I wanted to put that into the songs.

“I hope that it will put people forward to dealing with emotions and that it will strike a chord with people — to tell them they’re not alone, since I know that feeling can be hard. So yes, we do want to make a difference and we want to help people that are going through this kind of pain.” The current tour, which hits the House of Blues on Oct. 17, is timed to tie in with Mental Health Awareness Month and will follow the five-stages structure of the album, with older songs slotted in where they fit. “We’re finding that older songs of ours work the same way, like songs about friends going through hard times. We have one called ‘Scream!’ and that goes perfectly in the anger section.”

This may sound like heavy stuff for a band previously known for uplifting anthems. But Akers and his mandolin partner Brian Macdonald are both sons of therapists, and the concept allowed them to break out of their familiar alt-folk format. “Once we decided to write about the process of grief I probably got nine songs in one week, it was a pretty crazy flow. The part that surprised us the most was the anger section; we went back and forth about how heavy we wanted it to sound. With the bargaining, we got into some power-chord melodies, that reminded me a little of Weezer. And with ‘depression’ we want back to the Cure — we loved messing with the synthesizers and playing the kind of music we grew up with.”

And he didn’t have any qualms about airing such personal sentiments. “That’s the challenge any artist has, taking those stories that are specific and true to themselves and trying to make them universal. I remember that Bono said that a good songwriter can write about the coffee shop, the diner, the road they might be driving on. The more specific you can get, the more universal it sounds.”

While the closing “Acceptance” songs are mostly happy-sounding, Akers admits he’s not completely there yet. “You need to hold that flag up sometimes, just like you need to hold up the flag of anger sometimes. I think I was looking for a feeling of acceptance where everything would be great, but I found it’s not the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s more of an ongoing thing.”