Black Veil Brides Born Again

[Gerald Weiß]

BLACKVEIL BRIDES singer Andy Biersack told Rock Sound about "Born Again": "'Born Again' was a song that was written later in the process. We felt like we needed to have a song that represented the joy and the idea of rebirth with these characters in 'The Phantom Tomorrow' finding what they thought might be their savior in Blackbird. Through the story you find that there have been sightings of this character, there's this old legend of the idea of the Blackbird, this thing that's passed from generation to generation, and now this is 'The Phantom Tomorrow' and the people in the underground saying, 'This is our chance. We're gonna be born again,' singing in the streets. 'This is our opportunity to get out of the shit that we're dealing with with the Ninth Circle and all of the rules and the stipulations and the things that they have to go through. So this is meant to be kind of a joyous moment on the record before ultimately you discover this Blackbird character."

Regarding how he came up with "The Phantom Tomorrow" concept, Andy said: "In January of [2020], I just kind of sat down and started writing this story. I do a lot of drawing when I'm writing as well. I'm not great, but I like to be able to represent my ideas in that way. So I wrote out this whole story and drew character designs, and then, about a week and a half later, we were set to enter the studio, and it just kind of coincidental that this whole rush of this idea came to me. And so I went to the studio with everybody and said, 'Look, this is what I think we should do,' and laid out the story and the plot and the ideas. 'Cause we've done concept records before. The kind of method that we've found is best is I give the concept and the ideas, as far as the narrative perspective, to the band, and then that is how we write as a band together, to get tone and how we are gonna get through this journey. I will take those songs and then go basically write the lyrics to serve the story and plotlines along the journey from song one to the last song.

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BLACK VEIL BRIDES are "Born Again." Immediately following the conclusion of the sold-out Trinity Of Terror Tour across America, the band unveils the cinematic clip for "Born Again," the fourth single from their latest album, The Phantom Tomorrow.

Helmed by feature film and music video director Vicente Cordero (Cradle Of Filth, DevilDriver, David Hasselhoff) and produced in collaboration with occult luxury/streetwear masterminds MM Custom Fabrications, the evocative "Born Again" video arrives, appropriately, on Friday the 13th.

"This video was an opportunity to use the more macabre imagery we grew up loving as fans of classic horror movies," explains Black Veil Brides frontman and founder Andy Biersack. It also offered a chance to further flesh out the immersive world of The Phantom Tomorrow, told in multiple companion mediums, including comic books, action figures, and of course, music videos.

"We show a bit of what goes on in the '9th Circle,' which is the location in our Phantom Tomorrow storyline that exists as a plane of existence outside of reality," says Andy. "It's a more esoteric version of a fire-and-brimstone afterlife, but one that is directly attacking your daily life."

Produced by Erik Ron (Godsmack, Bush, Set It Off), The Phantom Tomorrow gave the band their first Top 10 hit on Mainstream Rock Radio, "Scarlet Cross." Like that song or the group's gold-certified 2013 anthem "In The End," "Born Again" blends accessible hooks and sharp metaphors.

"I think all of us struggle with demons that hold us back or make it difficult to get through life," adds Andy. "This song and video are about that push and pull. And how, ultimately, the battle is won not by pretending these parts of ourselves don't exist but by facing them head-on. And by saying no matter what we struggle with or the fears and anxieties we experience, we can defeat them and be 'born again' as the person we know ourselves to be in our hearts and minds."

Completed by longtime guitarists Jake Pitts and Jinxx, drummer Christian "CC" Coma, and bassist Lonny Eagleton, Black Veil Brides is a transcendent celebration of life-affirming power and anthemic catharsis. A gothic vision first summoned in a small town by an isolated kid fascinated with death, rock, theatricality, and monsters (both real and imagined), Black Veil Brides is now a postmodern hard rock institution with a legion of like-minded fans and supporters worldwide.

Black Veil Brides will next appear at several major rock festivals in the UK and Europe in June; Australia in July; and back home in the United States at RockFest WI 2022, Inkarceration Festival, and October's highly anticipated When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Like their band name suggests, Black Veil Brides evoke transcendent visions of an impenetrable hereafter, intermingling with a steely focus on the dark passions and elusive mysteries of the here and now. A romantic fantasy first summoned in a small town by founder Andy Biersack - a creative who was fascinated with death rock, theatricality, and monsters (both real and imagined). It wasn't until moving to Los Angeles that the unstoppable force the band is currently was finalized.

The band (and its members Andy Biersack, Jake Pitts, Jinxx, Lonny Eagleton, Christian Coma) Instagram and Twitter accounts command close to 10 million followers between them. Vale, the group's most recent full-length album, went to No. 1 on Billboard's Top Hard Rock Albums chart. In the hearts and minds of their fans, Black Veil Brides represents an unwillingness to compromise and a resistance to critics (personal and professional), fueled by the same fire as the group's own heroes, the iconoclasts whose creative output, once dismissed, is now canonized.

There are no liberal neckties. At a conservative gathering one will generally find a smattering of Adam Smith neckties. In the back of conservative magazines, there are likely to be one-column advertisements for Tocqueville neckties, Madison neckties, even Burke neckties. . . . When liberal essayist Robert Reich summarizes a conservative policy in his collection of essays The Resurgent Liberal and Other Unfashionable Prophesies, he invariably begins his account with its intellectual roots. . . . But when Reich subsequently sets out to revivify liberal ideology, he makes scant reference to what used to be called The Great Books. There is seemingly no one Mr. Reich can wear on his necktie.

Demons surface. For most people, demons surface in nightmares, but for us, for Jews, demons seem to surface in history. Pharaoh, Amalek, Nebuchadnezzar, Titus, Torquemada, Chmielnitsky, and Hitler were real demons. They killed real Jews. The night demons can be forgotten, but not the demons that remain when the morning breaks. These demons have changed something in the Jewish soul. I cannot say what the change is precisely, but it amounts to this at least: We Jews cannot fully trust the world again.

Christians cannot be genuinely faithful to their covenantal commitment by regarding themselves as essentially Jewish derivatives. And Jews cannot remain genuinely faithful to their covenantal commitment by regarding themselves as essentially proto-Christians. The view of accommodationism is one that is only theological, taking theology in the strictest sense, namely, without the incorporation of philosophical and historical perspectives.

Landmarking a building for its historic or cultural value stretches the police power beyond its traditional limits of protecting public health and safety, and then stretches it still further. Landmarking does not depend upon a plan that affects every parcel of property. It affects only those buildings that happen to be older than the statutory minimum age and that possess certain attributes, not previously identified, that led the members of a commission to designate them landmarks. That decision is inevitably more personal, less objective, than the mathematically expressible standards of a modern zoning law.

We would seem to have some use for moral guidance in our political economy, and that is what the popes offer us. Whether and to what extent we should accept it is a matter that we may discuss and debate in our political forums. But to reject it out of hand because it is morality and not economics is to fall back into the liberal individualism that is currently the greatest weakness of both our economic and political systems.

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