BLACK VEIL BRIDES' ANDY BIERSACK: 'We Finished A New Record'

In a recent interview with Brandy-Baye Robidoux of Idobi Radio, BLACK VEIL BRIDES frontman Andy Biersack confirmed that he and his bandmates have been working on the follow-up to their sixth album, "The Phantom Tomorrow", which came out in October 2021. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We finished a new record. At this point, one song is fully mixed. So it's very early. But we produced the record ourselves — myself and Jake [Pitts, BLACK VEIL BRIDES guitarist] were kind of at the helm in that — and it was the first time doing a self-produced record in that way, at least of original material. We had done re-records or things before, but this was the first time that we… It was also devoid of many outside voices."

Elaborating on BLACK VEIL BRIDES' decision to not work with an outside producer this time around, Andy said: "For a lot of years, you get to a place where you start… Your first record, you write the record together, and then you record it and then it's out there. And then you have a level of popularity, if you're lucky, and then people go, 'You know what? We should put you with this producer.' And then that producer has a way of doing things, and then you work with the next producer and they have a way of doing things. And then the more and more you work with different people, the more injection of their style becomes a part of what you do. And that's actually been really beneficial for us, because working with [producer] John [Feldy] Feldmann for so many years really created, for me, vocally how I am now. My voice, there's a definite line where you go, 'Oh, this person became a much better singer,' and I credit that all to Feldy and basically him teaching me how to use my own voice. Working with Erik Ron, working with Bob Rock, we've had a lot of luck with our producers, but we had never, in our whole career, back since the very beginning, had an opportunity to go, 'We kind of know what this band is,' and 'What would a record be like if we made it and tried to use our best judgment?' We didn't wanna go in there just celebrating ourselves. I think sometimes that's the thing that happens when bands produce their own record. They're, like, 'Everything we do is great.' We were very hard on ourselves to make sure that it was the best thing that we could do, and I'm really excited about how it's turning out."

Biersack went on to credit Feldmann and Ron with helping him develop the skills in the studio to oversee a BLACK VEIL BRIDES recording from beginning to end. "I wouldn't know how any of this stuff functions without particularly those two," he said. "Jake and I have always said we learned how to be people in a studio from John Feldmann. And then that carried over to where when we started working with Erik, who also had worked with Feldmann as an engineer in his early career, we come from that same school. And so I think in a lot of ways we brought that same sort of means of production to our record. It's just that we were doing it on our own. But it really comes from that for us."

Asked if it was "more challenging or easier" to produce the new album themselves, Andy said: "I would say it was a little bit more challenging in the capacity that you've gotta make sure that you get it right. I would say the easier thing is for me vocally, sometimes — and I guess this will be determined by how people hear it — but sometimes when you're singing, if you're working with a producer who is also a singer, they have a way that they want to hear something. So if I go, 'This melody goes this way,' and they go, 'Oh, this melody should go this way.' And then you're, like, 'Oh,' and that's unnatural. I always say, like, there's certain times when I can hear on records where I would've wanted it to be pushed this certain way, and then somebody else wanted it to go this other way, and then I just end up sounding like I don't know what I'm saying in the song. With this, it's just the way I want it, for better or for worse. So we'll find out whether that was the right way or not. We'll find out. We'll see if people like it."

Regarding whether BLACK VEIL BRIDES is "pulling from any unexpected influences" this time around, Andy said: "Well, I think we have a total lack of interest in any commercial crossover. We've been in the major label system for most of our career, where even though we were a band with a lot of shreddy guitars and I'm writing about theological ideas, they're, like, 'But where's the single?' And so you'd always kind of have to temper that with, 'We've gotta make sure that there's a single.' And what we have found, and thankfully working with Spinefarm now, 'Bleeders' was not a song that was made to be a hit. And yet it was a song that, because the label believed in it, did really well at radio and traditional places. So we want to be able to make songs that are enjoyable and that people at radio wanna play — we sincerely want that — but we are not in a position now where we're going to the studio going, like, 'Okay, but we've gotta make sure that we have the song that it's cool for the executives' kind of thing, which is kind of something that we had been bogged down by for a lot of years… And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. In some cases, you make a concept record that's an hour and a half long, but you happen to have a song that is a platinum single on it. People are, like, 'All right, fine. You could do weird stuff.' If you do that same thing and then you don't have that platinum single, yeah…. And we've seen both sides of that. So, at this point I feel like the best bet is just to make the coolest thing we can make as opposed to trying to go, 'I hope we've got that big hit on there,' 'cause you can't prescribe those things."

In May 2024, BLACK VEIL BRIDES released the title track from their "Bleeders" EP, inspired by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's "Sweeney Todd". The band paid tribute to the classic musical with a music video for the title track that is inspired by the musical's 2007 Tim Burton-directed film adaptation.

Released in June 2024, the three-track EP, which included "Bleeders", a cover of "My Friends" from the Sondheim classic, and a cover of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday", was BLACK VEIL BRIDES' first release for Spinefarm.