Black Veil Brides go back to basics 

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The Black Mass 2014 feat. Black Veil Brides w/ Falling In Reverse Set it Off, Drama Club

One of the traps that comes with making a full-on concept album, which Black Veil Brides did with its 2012 album, "Wretched and Divine: The Story of the Wild Ones," is coming up with an encore.

The fact is, very few bands have been able to build on the success and the ambition of successful concept albums. In fact, some would argue that only the Who, which set the standard for the rock opera with "Tommy," was able reach a new level when it made "Quadrophenia."

For a time, though, Andy Biersack, frontman and main songwriter of Black Veil Brides, thought he wanted to take on the challenge of writing another rock opera.

"After \'Wretched and Divine\' was done and I was still really in the concept record mode, you know, I\'m always thinking ahead. So I started to come up with what I thought would be the sequel to it," Biersack said in a late-October phone interview. "It was going to center around the concept of people who were fighting through the antiquated nature of rock and roll music and trying to save in some ways something that is kind of seen in many ways (being like) black-and-white TV or a rotary phone and try to bring it back to some sort of prevalence.

"Ultimately I enjoyed the concept," he said. "But it just was never anything that clicked to me in the same way that the previous one had."

Instead, with the new Black Veil Brides\' self-titled album, Biersack and his bandmates went back to basics, creating a collection of songs with no central theme and making what Biersack describes as a "very ballsy, straight-ahead rock and roll album."

"I feel really proud of that record, and I love what we came up with," Biersack said of "Wretched And Divine."

"But as we left that record, I just felt I hadn\'t had a chance to say things I wanted to say for a long time. And part of being a songwriter is that (songs are) your medium through which you expose yourself or you kind of exorcise the internal demons or struggles or even positive experiences. So for me to be able to write again under the guidelines that I\'m just going to write about things that I know as I experience them and I\'m going to shoot from the hip, that seemed like a very attractive thing."

The self-titled album arrives at a time when Black Veil Brides has enjoyed a steady climb in its career since the current lineup of Biersack (vocals, bass, keyboards), Ashley Purdy (bass), Jinxx (rhythm guitar), Jake Pitts (lead guitar) and Christian "CC" Coma (drums) came together in 2010. Each of the band\'s three previous albums — 2010\'s "We Stitch These Wounds," 2011\'s "Set the World on Fire" and "Wretched And Divine" — has debuted higher on Billboard magazine\'s album chart, with the latter album debuting at No. 7 and topping 200,000 copies in the United States alone.

But with the growing success came some difficulties, as the band members went through changes in their personal lives (including a marriage and a divorce), having money to buy homes and the chance to focus for a bit on home life instead of the band.

The result, Biersack said, is that for awhile, the band members grew a bit distanced from each other.

"That period only lasted really for a few months, and then we all kind of looked at each other and said \'Wow, what are we doing?\'" Biersack said, explaining that they realized they have the best job possible, and they all genuinely get along. "Really, it was a simple as that. We all sat down on a couple of different occasions after the (\'Wretched and Divine\') record and said hey, let\'s be best friends. Let\'s make a record that we\'re really proud of, all of us."

Achieving that goal meant having all band members participate in the writing for the self-titled album, a departure from "Wretched and Divine," which was pretty much entirely conceived and written by Biersack.

The more collaborative approach seems to have worked, as lean, hard-hitting and hooky songs such as "Heart Of Fire," "Devil In The Mirror" and "The Shattered God" give the self-titled album the straight-ahead rock feel the band intended.

The group is playing most of the new songs on its first tour behind the self-titled album. The band has also set aside the facial makeup that up to now had defined its visual look. But that doesn\'t mean the show will be stripped back.

"We\'ve been able to put together big video screens. It\'s the biggest drum riser we\'ve ever had," Biersack said. "We have some staging. We\'ve got geysers with CO2 and lots of lights. We\'re bringing an entire semi truck full of lighting rigs for this tour. In many ways, though we are no longer dressing up in such a costume-y way, the streamlined elements of the show and the look of the band and just the leather and everything, I think, lends itself better to this larger scale rock production."

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