|
RockinTrivia Test your knowledge |
RockinForum Add your comments |
|
|||||||||||
| |
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
Black Veil Brides
There are three ways a band can make money:
1) Royalties from sales and songwriting
2) Touring
3) Merchandise
In almost all cases merchandise sales are a result of moving CDs/downloads and relentless touring. Of course there is the occasional exception like Black Veil Brides. The video for "Knives And Pens" scored nearly 12 million YouTube views which in turn moved about 20,000 Brides T-shirts out of Hot Topic outlets.
"I wanted to make the next Motley Crue or KISS," frontman Andy Six told Billboard. "I had a very specific vision of what I wanted to do with an image. We're doing something more than a lot of people can offer, which is a larger-than-life image, theatrical presentation." And that was the key. BVBs were highly visual - dressed in black with black hair, black leather jackets, black pants/shirts, piercings, and heavy make-up (they had a deal with Mehron Makeup).
Six started Black Veil Brides in Cincinnati where they gained local notoriety despite near constant line-up changes. But it was when Six wanted to relocate to L.A., largely because nothing much was going to happen for them in Ohio, the band balked so Six left without them, resurrecting Black Veil Brides on the left coast.
The Brides '10 debut album "We Stitch These Wounds" sold 11,000 copies in its first week to land at #36 on the Billboard Album chart. While not up to their t-shirt sales it was still a good start.
Black Veil Brides' Post-Punk, Glam laced with Nu Metal is a bit quaint but as a visual band they take their horror movie pose seriously.
There isn't an anthem like KISS' "Rock N' Roll All Night," or reckless excess in the vein of Cooper's "School's Out" or even the trashy joy of Motley Crue's "Girls, Girls, Girls" but those bands didn't create those classics on their first time out either. BVB seems on the same trajectory.
"We Stitch These Wounds" has a handful of first-rate songs including the title track, "Perfect Weapon," "Heaven's Calling," "Never Give In," and the best of them all, "Knives And Pens."