Album review – Clea-marie Thorne
There’s always been this weird dismissal hanging over Black Veil Brides (BVB). Too theatrical for the metal gatekeepers. Too heavy for the pop crowd. Too sincere for the cool kids. Meanwhile the band just keeps stomping forward in platform boots, covered in eyeliner and spite, writing massive choruses for the outcasts and turning trauma into stadium-sized catharsis and an army of followers.
With Vindicate now sitting amongst their arsenal, they are sounding like they’ve finally stopped trying to prove anything to anyone except themselves. I for one am digging it.
This thing is dramatic as hell straight out of the gate. ‘Invocation To The Muse’ is opening like some gothic horror soundtrack, church organs swelling and tension building like the roof of the cathedral’s about to cave in before a hypnotic narration instructs the pathway toward vengeful vindication. Where are Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi?
Then the title track ‘Vindicate’ kicks the doors off with Jake Pitts (guitar) and Jinxx (guitar/violin) throwing down riff work that feels nastier and sharper than a lot of their recent material. Andy Biersack (vocals) is sounding possessed across this record. The cleans are still huge and theatrical, but the screams are filthier now, less polished, a more venomous edge.
The whole album is carrying this constant push-and-pull between revenge and redemption. One minute it’s full-on rage, next minute it’s existential dread wrapped in choir vocals and gothic melodrama. It’s very BVB, but there’s a maturity sitting underneath the eyeliner now, with Lonny Eagleton’s bass locking into the low-end while Christian “CC” Coma drives everything forward on drums like it’s barely holding itself together.
The band isn’t trying to recreate ‘Knives and Pens’. They’re taking the theatrical DNA from albums like ‘Wretched and Divine’ and dragging it through darker territory instead, like wandering barefoot through purgatory with ash coating your lungs and no clear way out. ‘Certainty’ is one track immediately oozing this and it is a standout on the album. It’s got this suffocating tension hanging over it the whole time, inspired by religious absolutism and ideological echo chambers, and you can feel that paranoia bleeding through the song. Andy’s vocals are carrying this desperate edge while Christian “CC” Coma (drums) is hammering the kit underneath everything like the bloke’s trying to shake himself loose from the inferno beneath him.
‘Bleeders’ is an absolute banger that previous fans turned fence sitters will no doubt fall for. This and ‘Hallelujah’ are probably the most instantly recognisable “classic BVB” moments on the album. Massive hooks. Gang vocals. Big fists-punching-in-the-air choruses designed for festival crowds screaming every word back while covered in cheap beer and sweat filling the space between skin and PVC or faux leather. But even these tracks are carrying more grit than older material. The production’s thicker. Dirtier. Less glossy Hot Topic poster band, more battle-scarred arena goths dragging themselves through the apocalypse.
Then you get blindsided by tracks like ‘Cut’ featuring Lilith Czar, which leans hard into emotional devastation instead of theatrical bombast. It’s moody and uncomfortable and genuinely vulnerable without becoming cheesy. That balance is difficult to land and somehow they pull it off with a flicker of tenderness without losing its bite. ‘Grace’ a tingling stringed instrumental and aptly named.
In contrast ‘Revenger’ featuring Machine Head is pure piss-and-vinegar aggression. Chunky riffs, snarling vocals, ugly groove metal energy tipped me over the edge! It feels like BVB flexing how heavy they can actually go when they feel like it. Fans online seem divided on it, but honestly the chaos works and Flynn is bringin’ it. One of my favourite tracks.
And then there’s ‘Ave Maria’. Bloody hell. This track feels enormous too. Jinxx’s orchestral touches are everywhere, the solo is absurd and the whole thing sounds like it belongs in the climactic scene of some doomed gothic fantasy with no fairy tale ending in sight. Even fans leaking early listens online were immediately singling this one out.
The back end of the record gets bleak too. ‘Sorrow’, ‘Woe & Pain’ and ‘Eschaton’ are dripping in end-of-the-world energy. There’s this constant sense throughout the album that everything is collapsing but the band’s choosing to stand in the fire anyway. It’s melodramatic, sure, but BVB have always understood that sincerity hits harder than pretending not to care. They’re embodying the mythology of the phoenix here, not rising untouched from the ashes, but dragging themselves out blackened, scarred and still burning, reasserting their place in music history through sheer conviction alone. That’s why ‘Vindicate’ works.
It’s not ironic. It’s not detached. It’s fully committed to its own grand gothic vision and that conviction makes the whole thing land harder. The riffs are heavier. The choruses are massive. The emotional weight feels real. And for a band that spent years getting written off as a phase, they’re sounding very comfortable surviving long past the people who underestimated them.
Forget nostalgia. BVB are sounding less like relics of a scene era playing for old emo kids clinging to their fringe years and more like a band that survived the fire while everyone else was busy writing their obituary.
