Black Veil Brides vocalist Andy Biersack took some time to discuss the bands new album “IV” with Revolvermag.com. The group have been working on the effort with producer Bob Rock (Metallica, The Offspring) for an October 28th release date. When asked of the lyrical content on the new album, Biersack replied:
“Very angry. I feel like in a lot of ways I had a lot of aggression towards the state of how we were perceived. Obviously some people will see, “Oh, he’s the guy who yells at awards shows” or whatever. But in a lot of ways, we had made this record [Wretched and Divine] so large in scale and had this grand story and we did the film. There was a certain level of frustration when you feel you do this thing so large and great, but there were so many people who just refused to listen to the songs, like, “They’re a faggy makeup band.”
I think on some level, when I was younger that used to affect me. In a way, I enjoyed looking back on those feelings because I don’t really care anymore. I can’t write about things in the moment anyway, but in a way I wanted to re-tap into those aggressive feelings. I think if anything thematically there is a lot more angst on this record in general. I’m shooting from the hip a lot more on this one. There’s no grand story and the metaphors aren’t as strong. So it’s a return to form—more like our first album, lyrically.”
In regards to the music, he offered:
“With the songs being more directed at a personal more angst feel, I think things are definitely heavier. Everybody says this is their heaviest and most melodic but it truly is for us. The feeling was, let’s really do something aggressive. We felt that way as a reaction from our own work. When we made ‘Wretched and Divine’ and as much as I love it, it’s a pretty sparkly record—it’s a record that could be done as a play because it’s very theatrical with no grit.
Like many artists, we don’t want to redo what we did. We’re savvier musicians than we were five or six years ago. We were writing songs together as opposed to fragmented in the studio. So we really wrote songs together, making decisions collectively with Bob there, and went back to a much more grittier and heavier sound.”
