Trigger caught up with Andy Six from The Black Veil Brides backstage in Bristol Academy to talk about their first tour in the UK supporting The Murderdolls, plans for their second album and much more.

Can you give us a brief history of the band such as how you came together and settled on the band name The Black Veil Brides?
All my life I wanted to have a band where I could combine Motley Crue, The Misfits and other darker image conches bands, and have a more harder rock sound, When I was about 14 I came up with the idea for the band name and what the band would eventually be, around the age of 17 I moved to Los Angeles and met the guys who are currently in the band and we went from there.

Who would you say your main musical influences are?
Musically I am influenced by bands such as The Damned, Deadboys, and obviously Motley Crue and the Misfits.

Your debut album ‘We Stitch These Wounds’ was released back in July 2010, how has the album gone down with your fans and the press since its release?
Fantastic, I don’t really care about how it goes down with the press, the fans are just fantastic, I suppose it has gone down well with the press, it has been great and sold really well and is still selling well and we are working on our second record now.

How did you go about writing the songs on the album?
It was a collective process, over the years you right songs and come up with ideas, and when the 5 of us got together we combined all the songs we had already written and applied different parts to the songs and made big monster sounding songs.

What would you say your favourite songs from the album are?
I like all of them for different reasons but I really like the songs with obvious audience participation parts so songs like ‘Children Surrender’ and ‘Never Give In’ and also the big gang vocal songs and punk rock sounding songs.

The artwork for the album is pretty impressive who came up with the ideas and final design?
My friend Richard Villa who is a pretty renowned artist he works with Tony Alba and a bunch of skateboarding companies, he met me pretty early on when I moved to Los Angeles and he took me under his wing and when we did the record he had this idea for a painting he wanted to do so we shot a photo of it and he ended up doing a oil painting based upon the photo which ended up being the final design.

I understand that you have started working on your second album, how are things going so far and what are you plans for it?
It’s going fantastic, it is our first major label album and we are working with British producer Josh Abaraham, it’s been great so far we have got half the record done and once we get back to the states from this tour we are going to finish it and it will be out around the summer.

I also understand that Tim Armstrong and Matt Skiba are going to have guest appearances on the album, how did this come about?
We have Tim Armstrong and a few other people but Matt Skiba is not on the album.
So a magazine wrote a slightly false story this week?
I actually spoke to the guy who wrote that afterword’s and he was doing a different story and made a mistake.
I was really looking forward to that as I love Alkaline Trio
So do I, I have 3 Alkaline Trio tattoos and they are one of my favourite bands, but yeah like I said Tim Armstrong is going to be on the record as well as Will Francis and bunch of other people, and it came about from our producer and generally meeting other people and bands that were fans of our band previously.

What themes and stories are you looking at covering on the new album?
Ultimately we don’t want to stray too far from the original first concept, the whole idea was to write an album based on the notion of being strong to yourself, as many bands these days write about really depressing things and give kids no real sense of self strength and who they are, so the record is going to advance on that notion and take it to the next step.

So tonight is the third show of the UK Murderdolls tour, how has the tour been going so far and how have you found being on the road with The Defiled and The Murderdolls?
Fantastic, I have beena huge Murderdolls fan for years so touring with those guys is great and the shows have been fantastic and it is really fun to play to a new audience and a new country that we have never been in before.

What can someone who has never seen you before expect from your live show?
More than anything we try to be as high energy as possible and give people a good reason to come to our shows as you have to remember that we are entertainers on stage and we are here to entertain our audience so we do our best to give 110% and give people an high energy show.

You have been confirmed to play the warped tour 2011 is this for the whole tour? And how excited are you about this?
Yeah it is for the whole tour and I am very excited about it as like most American kids I went whilst growing up and saw bands like Rancid, Dropkick Murphys, Afi and those kind of bands so it’s great to be in that kind of whirl.

You have also been confirmed to be playing at the Download Festival this summer, how much are looking forward to coming back over and will you be at any other UK festivals?
Yeah we will be playing other UK festivals which are due to be announced soon, I am very much looking forward to Download as obviously it used to be Monsters Of Rock which was one of the biggest things for a kid who loved heavy metal music, so I can’t think of anything bad about playing.
Yeah it will be a good experience and show for you.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
A Giraffe because I’m tall and it wouldn’t be too much of a learning curve

Thanks for your time is there a message for your fans reading this?
Just keep following the band as we have some exciting stuff coming up.

Interview by Trigger