Black Veil Brides to 'Set World on Fire' with Major Label Debut

Black Veil Brides do not exactly have modest ambitions for their sophomore album. "This is going to be the best album anybody's ever made," founder and frontman Andy Six tells Billboard.com about "Set the World On Fire," which comes out June 14 as the glammy Cincinnati group's major label debut for Lava/Universal Republic. 

In fact, Six (ne Biersack) labeled the demo CDs "Black Veil Brides' Greatest Hits" as the faux title for the 11-track set, explaining, "Every song is my favorite. I love them all in a way. Obviously there are going to be certain standout songs, but it's hard to tell what my favorite song is going to be until there's audience interaction, when you see fans sing along."

It was the dedicated BVBArmy, in fact, that inspired Six's songwriting for "Set the World on Fire." "Ultimately, the influence for the second record was very much shaped by fan reaction for the first record," 2009's "We Stitch These Wounds," which topped the Billboard Independent Albums chart, Six explains. "Over the last year we've seen so much and done so much, meeting people and hearing their stories, you can't help but be affected...So musically and lyrically we tried to shape our second record based off those feelings and those emotions. 

"I still love those songs on the first record," Six adds, "but these songs to me are so much better. I feel them in a way I didn't on the first record. This is an adult writing songs this time. Everything is bigger -- more songs, more vocals, more melodies. And it all came naturally; it's not an attempt to try to outdo our first record, but we wanted to show how we had naturally grown as a band and as songwriters."

BVB made "Set the World on Fire" in California with Josh Abraham (Linkin Park, Velvet Revolver, 30 Seconds to Mars, Korn, Mastodon), who was the first producer they interviewed for the project. "That first meeting we wrote (the title track)," Six recalls, "and we immediately just canceled all our other meetings and went with Josh and his team." The song will also appear in Wes Craven's "Scream 4."  

The album's first single, "Fallen Angels," is due out May 3 on iTunes, with a video filmed in Los Angeles with director Nathan Cox. The song was inspired by a biblical story introduced by BVB cover artist Richard Villa, according to Six. "He's very much into biblical stories," Six says, "and he found the whole story of the fallen angels who were the ultimate outcasts. They weren't sent to hell, but they weren't allowed in heaven. They had nowhere to go. They weren't human, either, so they had this lonely existence. They wound up banding together and creating their own gang of sorts. We really liked that and wound up writing a song very much based on how we could equate that to our lives."

BVB has been road-testing some of "Set the World on Fire's" songs during its headlining run on the AP Tour, which wraps up May 6 in Cleveland. The group will perform at the Bamboozle Music Festival on May 1 in East Rutherford, N.J., and at Rock on the Range on May 21 in Columbus, Ohio -- along with other festival dates in the U.S. and Europe -- before heading out on the Vans Warped Tour starting June 24 in Dallas.