Andy Biersack
Every Christmas, all I ever wanted was Playskool instruments. It was my entire life. And then by the time I was 6 or 7 years old, it became, 'Now I'm going to force my entire family to watch me perform all these rock songs.'Collection: Christmas
I was a little chubby kid that no girls ever talked to. I had little chance of becoming an internationally known rock star. Music was my escape and my belief system.Collection: Chance
The pen and the written word hold a great deal of power.Collection: Power
Nobody is convinced that Johnny Depp goes to Walmart dressed as Sweeney Todd, but everyone expects us to.
In terms of stage presence for me, I'm influenced by a myriad of things. A lot of punk performers, people like Dave Vanian from The Damned and Davey Havok from AFI was a huge influence on me when I was younger.
Always be yourself and rebel against what people tell you should be and be whatever you want to.
I will say one thing: Mick Mars is one of the greatest songwriters I've ever met in my life and had the pleasure to work with.
Growing up, I went to the Warped Tour a lot, and I got to see bands like Rancid and AFI and Dropkick Murphys and these bands that meant so much to me when I was a kid - all in succession on these stages, so to get to play that same stage that I watched those bands play is a huge thing for me.
The older I get, the more interest I have in writing other kinds of music.
The older I got, I started to realize more it's not necessarily that any of us are inherently bad or good; you just kind of carve your own way, and you are your experiences and your surroundings and what you grow up in.
I am a clinical zombie.
I don't know what metalcore is. I know what rock n' roll is... It's not rocket science.
That's what makes me insufferable to be around, is that most of my life I have assumed that everyone wants to see me perform and do things all the time.
To be honest, I've always been really interested in the role of the host, whether it's our kind of Billy Crystal-style traditional awards show host or when you have someone like Louis C.K. or a more edgy stand-up comedian do their take on a hosting role.
My job as the host of a rock awards show is not to be as divisive as possible, but certainly you want to be able to interject your jokes and how you feel about stuff.
The story of my life publicly has been told through 'Alternative Press.' Former employees, people who have worked there - my friend Ryan Downey, who wrote for 'AP' for a long time - I've been able to have really great articles written about me and talk openly about things in my life.
How do we make a record that's true to the vibe of the band but still maintain the pace of moving forward and doing something fresh?
I go to a lot of self-help groups in the day, and then I can sleep pretty well at night.
Rock stars aren't crapped out of the sky.
We truly believe with hard work, dedication and perseverance, we can become the best at what we do. No one wants to become mediocre.
I don't want to paint myself as some villain - I was never a bad guy doing horrible things, but I got too caught up in wanting a very specific thing to happen to the band. Ultimately, I had to find the ability in myself to get over that and stop being so stringent and learn to laugh a little bit more.
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.
Coming out of 'Wretched and Divine,' I was still wanting to explore the more theatrical elements of songwriting. That led to Andy Black.
When I walk around on the street and someone comes up to me, I have just as many full-grown men with large beards in Slipknot shirts saying he likes my band as much as I do girls with bright pink hair.
Lyrically, the most important thing for me is, how can I tell a cohesive story?
For us, all we care about is maintaining what we do as a band.
We've won both the best and worst band in so many major magazines - we just get written off so much, but we don't care.
For us, we are interested in doing what's cool for us and what's cool for the audience. That's it.
I have no goal to have artistic credibility.
If you nominate us for something, we're going to win.
I don't do anything unless I think about it six months in advance.
There's no place for Depeche Mode and the Sisters of Mercy in the music I make with my band. If I was a fan, I wouldn't want to hear that on a Black Veil Brides record. It was important for me and for the integrity of the band not to tarnish it.
More than anything, I write about what I know. The experiences that I've had in my life and that we've all had collectively, that's what we draw from.
I know what it's like to be an outcast in society. I know what it's like to want to find strength, and more importantly, I know what it's like to find that internal strength and rise out of the pain of being just sort of a weirdo.
If what you're writing is genuine, regardless of whether it sounds cliche or people wouldn't necessarily think it's the most brilliant metaphor in the world, it's always important to be genuine with what you're writing; at least, that's how I feel.
For someone like me, music is all I've ever thought about - playing big shows, and then, when you take something that is based around your music and put it in a completely different medium, it's a really interesting and cool emotion to watch.
I see the merit in religion, and I see the need for faith and hope and sometimes people who are more snide look at people who are religious, particularly people in rock bands, and they'll say, 'Oh that's dumb, you believe in whatever,' but I think everybody believes in something.
One of the things that always disappointed me as a kid, growing up, was when you could tell the singer had a fancy for something different and turned the band into something else.
I knew that my love for the Sisters of Mercy, Lords of the New Church and that kind of stuff, was never going to lend itself well to a direct interpretation in Black Veil Brides.
When I was a kid, it was so important to listen only to bands nobody had ever heard of. I missed out on so much interesting music because of my need to listen to a psychobilly band that only two people knew about... Because I thought I was cool.
As you get older, you realize you're not that cool. You also realize the people you called posers are just people like you.
The image of the band has always been something that's evolved or changed with every record cycle that we've done. I think, in a lot of respects, that's because we were so interested in having a visual representation for the music that we were making.
I think, on any given day, somebody could help out a homeless person and cuss out somebody that cut them off in traffic, and I think that everybody has that inside them: it's just how you live that balance - so I think everybody is 'Wretched and Divine.'
I think Heaven and afterlife is for the living; it's for the people that continue on and remember that person, and if you've done something that is substantial in your life then you can leave a legacy and do something positive.
I never anticipated seeing 40.
I just don't really think about death.
On Warped Tour in Boise, Idaho, I broke my tooth on the mic. I took a pretty significant chunk out of my tooth and had to have it sanded down. It wasn't the most painful injury, but it was the most unexpected one.
Being a singer, I can easily break facial extremities, but breaking my nose in Luxembourg was extremely painful.
The devotion of the BVB Army, with its very big online presence, is amazing. We've been fortunate from the very beginning. It was something that was really able to spur on our career.
You can't deny a band whose fans will literally do anything to see them win the awards. We're very appreciative to the fan base. That mutual feeling of appreciation is something that really helps.