In a recent interview with the Talk Toomey podcast, Black Veil Brides frontman Andy Biersack talked about the experience of opening for Mötley Crüe over ten years ago.
“It’s an interesting thing, because those bands that are these iconic bands, it’s very rare for the opener to have any kind of positive experience, regardless of who it is,” the rocker explained. “We toured with Mötley Crüe in soccer stadiums in Europe, and I thought, ‘This is the greatest thing that’s ever gonna happen to us.’”
Biersack was wrong because it didn’t exactly turn out how he expected it to be. “And I’ll never forget, the first show was in [Warsteiner Hockey Park in Mönchengladbach, Germany in June 2012], and after the first song was done, it wasn’t booing, it was total silence, like strong, arms crossed, angry silence. And you’d almost prefer them boo at that point, because if it’s 20,000 people and you can see them all be dead silent, it’s more unnerving than hearing at least some noise. So it would happen after every song.”
“And so I’m the singer, I’m the M.C., I’ve gotta like, I got to say something,” he added. “So I just started saying to our drummer C.C. [Christian Coma], I go, ‘Just go into the next song as soon as this one’s over.’ We basically played a medley of our songs because we would never stop between the songs ’cause it was too cringe-inducing to have to deal with the silence. We were coming off stage early every night on that tour, which a lot of times the production people for those big tours love it. So at the very least they liked us.”
Black Veil Brides expected to make the crowd warmed up for the headliner on their June 2012 show. However, the ‘deafening silence’ wasn’t what they expected from the audience. “When we opened for Motley Crue, it was best for me not to speak between songs,” Biersack recalled the show in an earlier interview. “Because the deafening silence of their audience was enough for me to just go, ‘OK, let’s go into the next one before the silence takes us…’”
In May, Black Veil Brides dropped the title track from their ‘Bleeders’ EP. It was inspired by the Tim Burton movie ‘Sweeney Todd.’ Released in June, the three-track EP featured ‘Bleeders,’ a cover of ‘My Friends’ from the Sondheim musical, and a cover of U2’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday.’