Black Veil Brides A24 films and lyrics inspired by the Oscar-winning film Conclave (2024). The track, along with the already released “Hallelujah” and “Bleeders”, will be part of the band's new studio album.
In an exclusive interview with Wikimetal , vocalist Andy Biersack spoke about the main concept of the album and commented on the cancellation of the Latin American tour that was supposed to have included Brazil in 2025.
Although the new album remains untitled and without a release date, the singer assured Wikimetal that the project will be available "sooner than people expect."
Check out the full interview:
Wikimetal: The songs you've released so far, especially "Hallelujah" and "Certainty," show a heavier side of Black Veil Brides and seem like a big leap compared to the last album, The Phantom Tomorrow . Something that surprised me was hearing your screamo vocals again. What was it like working with your voice in that style again?
Andy Biersack: Our first two albums have a lot of screamed vocals, especially the first one. And we played all those songs live, so live I scream a lot and I always have. I think at some point, probably around Wretched and Divine (2013), I really got interested in melody as the defining force of things. It was like, on the first album, often the screamed parts were almost secondary to the singing. So it was like, I'd write a melody and I didn't know what to do in the bridge, so I'd just scream, you know? I was a kid back then. So often I didn't intentionally think about it, like I could convey a stronger emotion that way. It was more like, "Oh, I think that sounds cool."
When it came time to make this album, many of the songs, in terms of tone and lyrics, are very… not necessarily angry, but very serious in tone. And I'm trying to convey a much more emotional perspective. So, it made sense that the vocals would be heavier or more aggressive in some parts. There are songs on this album where 75%, 80% is screaming and almost nothing is sung because that's what the music calls for, the tone of the lyrics and what I'm saying in the music demanded it. So, I don't think it was necessarily like, “Oh, let's put more screaming on this album.” I think the story I'm trying to tell seemed to be better told with more aggressive vocals.
WM: This time you're producing this album independently. What did you, as a band, experiment with that wasn't possible before, or that you simply didn't have the opportunity to explore?
AB: It's nobody's fault, but we're in a position where we're a band that's had a lot of commercial success with certain songs, and whenever you're in a position with a producer, that producer is hired by a record label primarily to make you produce material as successful as your most successful material. So there's a lot of pressure for the songs to be as big as "In The End" or anything else on this album. So, it's nobody's fault, but often we're pressured to try to make the most commercially viable album possible. And with this album, we were very lucky that wasn't the case. We were able to make exactly the album we wanted. And thankfully, a song like "Bleeders" did very well commercially. "Certainty" has also done well so far. So, without being intentionally commercial, we're achieving the success that, let's say, a record label would want. But we managed to make the record exactly the way we wanted, and it wasn't about anyone else's interests.
WM: I read something very interesting about “Certainty,” which was that the film Conclave inspired part of the lyrics. What about that film caught your attention to the point of inspiring you to write this track?
AB: The album started as a more straightforward conceptual project, a kind of retelling of the story of Milton 's * Paraíso Perdido* . That was the main idea of the album. And as we progressed… I think I started writing the album's story around 2023. The first versions of the songs were very focused on telling that story, but over time, my interest in doing that diminished. I still love that story, but I became much more interested in talking about how these archetypal concepts affected me in my real life, the things I was observing and experiencing. So, it kind of changed.
And, you know, all of this is different for me because I grew up Catholic. So, Conclave is a film about something I learned in school. You know, when a pope dies and a new one is enthroned, as happened recently, there were entire days dedicated to it in class, discussing the meaning of it, the different colors of the smoke and everything else. So, I have an intimate knowledge of the subject because I was raised that way. And I found it interesting. But watching the film, I found Ray's speech about certainty, the certainty of existence and belief as something almost contrary to faith, very interesting to me, because I feel that much of what we have culturally are these philosophical or emotional certainties, and this almost prevents the ability to think, reason, or have nuances. So, it was inspired, in a way, but it's not like the song wasn't about Conclave in that sense.
WM: Do you think this also fits with the current political climate around the world, where religion has played such an important role?
AB: To a certain extent. I mean, I think obviously everything we experience is filtered through the lens of ideological, religious, or political beliefs, because everything happens on the internet. And the internet is a kind of microcosm of people's feelings, right? People say things on social media that they wouldn't say in a restaurant. They feel encouraged to have a very rigid opinion about someone or something, in a way they perhaps wouldn't if they were talking to a real person. So, I think it's more… I'm talking about the rigid lines we draw in an unrealistic or inhumane way.
Because I tour, I interact with many different types of people who believe in many different things. And I'm always fascinated by the disconnect people have between real life and the internet, fervently believing in something until they encounter something different. The example I always give is this: people get very angry when someone tours with someone else, or something like that. And I find it interesting because it's very rare for someone with a job, a normal job, to quit just because a coworker has a different ideology. You understand? It's almost impossible, because you need to balance your personal and professional life. So, just because someone you don't interact with, who works on the other side of the building, believes in something different, doesn't mean you should quit and put your family at risk. But on the internet, things work like that. There are such distinct microcosms that if someone in your social circle thinks differently from you, you have to leave that circle.
WM: Speaking a little more about the album, what kind of spoilers can you give us?
AB: If you listen to the album from beginning to end, from the first to the last track, you'll see that I structured the lyrics in a way that, I believe, tells a complete story, an emotional story. And I think the spoiler would be to say that the intention is for it to end in a loop and return to the beginning. The album is cyclical in that sense, because the way we experience emotions, from my perspective and as a lyricist, is that we go through all of that, then we go through it all again and so on. Therefore, the intention is to represent emotion and human experience realistically. So, the album itself is cyclical. You can listen to it from beginning to end and, when you return to the beginning, it will start again with the same emotion.
WM: Did you explore new musical genres on this album as well?
AB: I find it difficult to say because, musically, you might think, “Oh, that’s different for them.” But I don’t know. I think we’re a rock band, we compose rock. It’s very difficult to define, you know? I’m not very… I’m more interested in telling stories through the lens of what I find most interesting and what I… is what I listen to. I have nothing against other musical genres, but it’s… You know, it’s a hard rock/metal album at its core.
WM: I'd like to talk a little more about touring, since last year you had to cancel shows in Latin America. Would you like to comment on what happened?
AB: It's difficult because I don't want to hurt anyone or create problems. Even though some people have tried to do that to us, it's not something I'm interested in. I'll put it this way: we were in a very difficult situation with some things happening behind the scenes. And when that was added to some health problems affecting our team, it was a very difficult decision that had to be made. And we did what we thought was right. And knowing that we intended to come back, and we still intend to come back to play, because we had just… The point is… All I'm going to say is that, if anyone is looking for a deeper meaning behind this, we were in all those places in 2024. So, you know, we… We played in all those places, just with a different team, let's say. So, we intend to come back. I don't want to make a big deal out of it because I was a little… I was surprised that some people tried to create drama out of it, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me these days.
WM: Do you think it could still happen this year, or are you still unsure?
AB: Yes, we're trying to figure it out. I think the hardest thing is trying to plan the year when you're participating in so many festivals and things like that, and trying to figure out how to fit the shows in amidst all of that. So, I would say it's not impossible that it will happen this year, but it will definitely happen next year, during the album recording cycle.
WM: Still talking about shows and festivals, 10 years ago, Black Veil Brides participated in Monsters of Rock and I think you didn't have the best experience with the audience.
AB: Oh, you know, it's funny, actually not. People think I was more upset about it than I really was. You need to understand that we received that kind of treatment practically everywhere back then. It was very common for us to play at festivals and be booed and have things thrown at us. So, I want to say to the Brazilian fans, I know Brazilian fans have been saying this for years, that they apologized or said we were upset about it. I can tell you: it's okay. You know, it was just a phase in our career. We dealt with a lot of that in those days. And it wasn't a unique experience. I'd say maybe it was unique in the sense that it was the loudest booing we ever received, to the point where I could barely hear myself in my headphones because of the noise. But again, we played festivals in Europe and got bottles thrown and everything. So, I don't look at that and think, "Wow, it was just that one time in Brazil." I consider that a phase of our career that doesn't happen as often nowadays.
WM: More conservative rock and metal fans generally don't embrace new bands. And I'm sure Black Veil Brides wasn't the only one that went through that. Do you think that's improved over the years?
AB: Yes, it's interesting. I think it comes in waves. You can almost tell where in the conversation about our [musical] genre someone stopped based on what they say about us. Because in the last two years we've had a huge wave of positivity in the rock and metal world. But the internet is so segmented that, you know, not everyone sees everything. Yesterday we announced the North American tour and I could tell which people hadn't seen our name in a while because they were using old clichés about us. And I think: "that's not the focus of the conversation anymore." I wish I could say that all of that is over, but that's how it is. I think we'll always be a band that, for some reason, provokes a very intense reaction in a lot of people. For better or for worse. I don't think we'd be where we are today if it weren't for that. There are a lot of artists who come along and people say, "That's great." And then they kind of disappear because there's no conversation. Nobody's really talking about them, you know? So, I ended up accepting that people are going to say irrelevant or irrational things about our art, and I simply ignore them.
WM: I wanted to talk a little bit about movies with you because it seems to me that this is an important part of your creative process as a band. Your videos have many cinematic influences. How does watching movies affect your creative process as an artist?
AB: It's almost like I see things in different ways. I can quickly tell if I'm watching something that's going to be artistically useful to me. For example, I remember watching the new Frankenstein and immediately thinking, "Oh, I'm going to catalog the visual elements of this because it's a reference." You know? Like, I'm seeing things here that I want to use as a reference in terms of color palettes and things like that. My wife and I watch a lot of things and we enjoy a wide variety of media. We both love horror movies. We like superheroes and everything else. But I know if I'm watching something that I'm going to catalog as a point of reference or if I'm just watching.
If you talk about the folk horror that influenced the “Certainty” video, it’s a combination of several different things. And George, the director, being a similar artist in terms of visuals and the things he’s into, we’re working on something for the next song that will have a video. It’s a totally different genre, but I think people will recognize the references. So I like that. But I would say I absorb a little bit of everything that inspires me. And that probably started when I was a kid and grew up loving comic books and other universes, thinking about these ideas of large-scale world-building.
WM: Do you have a list of films that inspired you to create this new album?
AB: Not necessarily films. There are many different things. As I said, it may be that Paradise Lost inspires me as much as the Jimmy Eats World album. There's a huge range of things that inspire you, and if you listen to the album, you won't necessarily realize it. Do you understand what I mean? Like, you won't think: "Oh, I think this album was inspired by a very old Christian poem and an emo album from 2010." But in my head, these are the things that serve as a common thread, that make me think: "Ah, I know what I took from here and there and put it all together."
WM: What are your expectations and ambitions for the new Black Veil Brides album?
AB: You know, I really don't have expectations because I think that's beyond what an artist can have, since it's not a meritocracy, you know? You can't just say, "This album is really good, so it's going to be a hit." What I hope is that it continues to be successful to the point where people think, "Yeah, you guys can keep doing this." That's all I hope for: the opportunity to continue creating exactly what we want to do. You know, that's an artist's dream: to be successful enough to live a life dedicated to art and creation. And I've been very lucky to have achieved that so far. So, I hope the album is successful so we can continue making amazing albums.
READ ALSO: Black Veil Brides releases new single “Certainty”, inspired by the film 'Conclave'