If you nominate us for something, we're going to win.
We truly believe with hard work, dedication and perseverance, we can become the best at what we do. No one wants to become mediocre.
My biggest love has always been the music Black Veil Brides make, but that doesn't mean I don't listen to or enjoy other things.
Nobody is convinced that Johnny Depp goes to Walmart dressed as Sweeney Todd, but everyone expects us to.
For us, we are interested in doing what's cool for us and what's cool for the audience. That's it.
It seems like a gross waste of time to continue our career predicated on the idea that we're going to divide opinion. What's more important is just doing something that you love.
We're not trying to shock people with our image.
I go to a lot of self-help groups in the day, and then I can sleep pretty well at night.
The image of the band has always been something that's evolved or changed with every record cycle that we've done. I think, in a lot of respects, that's because we were so interested in having a visual representation for the music that we were making.
For someone like me, music is all I've ever thought about - playing big shows, and then, when you take something that is based around your music and put it in a completely different medium, it's a really interesting and cool emotion to watch.
My whole life, I've loved '80s synth and goth rock like The Sisters of Mercy and Depeche Mode.
I don't know what metalcore is. I know what rock n' roll is... It's not rocket science.
To be honest, I've always been really interested in the role of the host, whether it's our kind of Billy Crystal-style traditional awards show host or when you have someone like Louis C.K. or a more edgy stand-up comedian do their take on a hosting role.
We made 'Wretched and Divine,' and as much as I love it, it's a pretty sparkly record - it's a record that could be done as a play because it's very theatrical with no grit.
I know what it's like to be an outcast in society. I know what it's like to want to find strength, and more importantly, I know what it's like to find that internal strength and rise out of the pain of being just sort of a weirdo.
I never anticipated seeing 40.
We're not here to make the ignorant people happy. We're here to write our music for those people that are interested in good rock n' roll music.
I have no goal to have artistic credibility.
A band like Avenged Sevenfold I've praised quite a bit publicly, because it's a band that has moved into that arena-size thing for a hard rock band.
For us, all we care about is maintaining what we do as a band.
Being able to be one of the headline bands on Warped Tour was a dream I had since I was in middle school.
The pen and the written word hold a great deal of power.
Even if you don't like what I do, and you don't like my band, you might have a fan that likes both of us, and why would you wanna alienate them?
You can't deny a band whose fans will literally do anything to see them win the awards. We're very appreciative to the fan base. That mutual feeling of appreciation is something that really helps.
We know that listening to Black Veil Brides, wearing Black Veil Bride shirts, or being in Black Veil Brides isn't always the most popular thing in the world.
There is nothing more, I guess, cannibalistic than the metal or the hard rock scene, it seems.
The devotion of the BVB Army, with its very big online presence, is amazing. We've been fortunate from the very beginning. It was something that was really able to spur on our career.
I will say one thing: Mick Mars is one of the greatest songwriters I've ever met in my life and had the pleasure to work with.
One of the things that always disappointed me as a kid, growing up, was when you could tell the singer had a fancy for something different and turned the band into something else.
Growing up, I went to the Warped Tour a lot, and I got to see bands like Rancid and AFI and Dropkick Murphys and these bands that meant so much to me when I was a kid - all in succession on these stages, so to get to play that same stage that I watched those bands play is a huge thing for me.
Kiss will always be Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley to me.
If what you're writing is genuine, regardless of whether it sounds cliche or people wouldn't necessarily think it's the most brilliant metaphor in the world, it's always important to be genuine with what you're writing; at least, that's how I feel.
Our shows have always been sort of an all-generations thing, people from 6 to 60.
The story of my life publicly has been told through 'Alternative Press.' Former employees, people who have worked there - my friend Ryan Downey, who wrote for 'AP' for a long time - I've been able to have really great articles written about me and talk openly about things in my life.
In terms of stage presence for me, I'm influenced by a myriad of things. A lot of punk performers, people like Dave Vanian from The Damned and Davey Havok from AFI was a huge influence on me when I was younger.
We've won both the best and worst band in so many major magazines - we just get written off so much, but we don't care.
When I walk around on the street and someone comes up to me, I have just as many full-grown men with large beards in Slipknot shirts saying he likes my band as much as I do girls with bright pink hair.
I just don't really think about death.
I think, on any given day, somebody could help out a homeless person and cuss out somebody that cut them off in traffic, and I think that everybody has that inside them: it's just how you live that balance - so I think everybody is 'Wretched and Divine.'
All I ever wanted to do was be in a band.
The older I get, the more interest I have in writing other kinds of music.
Whether I'm trying to or not, I have this inherent feeling that music is uplifting; it makes you feel victorious, and that makes you feel like you can take on the world.
Lyrically, the most important thing for me is, how can I tell a cohesive story?
I wouldn't want to make the same record over and over again or look the same or be the same. I think that's just human life in general, though.
Every Christmas, all I ever wanted was Playskool instruments. It was my entire life. And then by the time I was 6 or 7 years old, it became, 'Now I'm going to force my entire family to watch me perform all these rock songs.'
It's not easy to be the weird kid or the rebel.
As you get older, you realize you're not that cool. You also realize the people you called posers are just people like you.
As far as being onstage, commanding presence, I've always looked up to people like Axl Rose and Freddie Mercury and Paul Stanley - the rock gods. I've always wanted to be able to achieve that level of commanding nature onstage and really leading people at a show.
Being a singer, I can easily break facial extremities, but breaking my nose in Luxembourg was extremely painful.
