Following their upheaval of Download Festival’s Apex Stage, Black Veil Brides grace the UK with a trio of intimate gigs to celebrate their seventh album, Vindicate. The band promised a “one-of-a-kind fan interactive experience and performance”. What this turns out to mean is nearly two hours of getting roasted by Andy Biersack, going hoarse from singing along to more songs than untrained vocal cords should, and partying like it’s 2011 and Set The World On Fire has just come out.
Black Veil Brides – Saint Agnes
The Dome, London – 17 June 2026
Words: Lucy Dunnet
Photography: Aggie Anthimidou
Fans clad in everything from full faces of early BVB war paint to more demure, peeled back styles (the BVB army doesn’t close its doors to anyone) file into The Dome, accompanied by an exclusively Nine Inch Nails hour-long playlist.
Saint Agnes
By the time Saint Agnes skip onto the stage, you half imagine you’ve just experienced a NIN support set. But as soon as the pounding synths and grating Industrial-pop start exploding from London Alt-Rockers Saint Agnes, the playlist choice makes total sense.
Vocalist Kitty A. Austen is a writhing storm of searing screams and pissed-off cleans, and the sheer musical unit that is Jon Tufnell (guitar), Ben Chernitsky (bass) and Andy Head (drums) thrash behind her in an unrelenting thrum.
At one point, Jon and Ben embody two antelopes, locking horns as they pull off a shred battle – one where, fortunately, everyone is the winner. “We’re here to have a bad time,” Kitty snarls, in between an assault of cold-hued strobe lights and spine-scratchingly angsty riffs.
With expulsive, Alt-Metal tracks like Bloodsuckers and Good Boy, it is easy to see why Black Veil Brides chose Saint Agnes to start the party tonight. A musical avalanche of hyperactivity and style, if Saint Agnes say they are here for a bad time, then suddenly a bad time becomes the most enticing option out there.
Black Veil Brides
A haunting organ intro will never not be a sonic gateway to all the best gothic fantasies. Tonight’s organ is Invocation To The Muse, and the fantasies are, obviously, Black Veil Brides up close and personal in a 600-capacity room.
So when Andy Biersack waltzes onto the stage and grins, waving at the crowd like he is reuniting with old friends, the crowd collectively swoons. And then the screaming, the headbanging, and the phone-waving begin, as Black Veil Brides launch into their set with the iconic Knives And Pens – a track that “came out 100 years ago,” Andy deadpans.
Knives And Pens is the track that catapulted Black Veil Brides’ rise in the alternative music scene, and its release date (17 June 2009) became the annual celebration of Black Veil Brides Day. Is anyone feeling old yet?
The only one who is not looking old is, of course, the vampire frontman. When a crowd member later asks point-blank if Andy Biersack is a vampire, he retaliates with, “What if I said yes? If you met an undead person who wants to eat you… [the crowd cheers] Don’t cheer! You’re thinking ‘he wants to eat me’ in a sexual way, but it really wouldn’t be…”
Andy asked for unhinged interaction with the crowd, and unhinged interaction is what he gets.
“One of the benefits of this club tour is I get to look at you a lot closer than usual,” he says, after getting the lighting guys to turn the lights up so that he can take in the army before him.
He admires one fan’s early days BVB makeup and reminisces about how, in a venue as “fucking ridiculous” as this one with no fans (of the cold air releasing sort), he used to have goth tears pouring down his face not even ten minutes in.
Fans throw things at him. Sometimes he wears them, like a great pair of glasses with WAYNE in green flashing lights, and sometimes he does not even pretend to try and catch them and becomes a human ring toss for one barrier cuddler’s collection of glow stick rings.
Andy is a (Bier)sack of sassy humour and sarcastic trolling that elicits almost as many guffaws, snorts and giggles from the crowd as their music does screams and “woos”. And new tracks Bleeders, Hallelujah, Vindicate and Certainty garner such a raucous response of screams and “woos” that it makes it nigh on impossible to differentiate between these and every old favourite that comes after.
It is also hard to decide whether Andy’s interactive stand-up routine or the massive melodies of Rebel Love Song, Wretched and Divine or In the End, filling every dark corner with huge spikes of dopamine, is the main character tonight.
When Jinxx is not slashing out riffs, Andy is “borrowing” the security guards’ cooling water spray and squirting it all over the sweat-drenched guitarist – lead guitarist Jake Pitts gets no such love.
Bassist Lonny Eagleton, when Andy asks him if he has anything to say, grins and cheers for London, bringing “all the right vibes” (he’s the nice one). And Wade Murff gets a huge cheer for stepping in on drums and learning the entire show in four days, with Christian “CC” Coma having had to drop off due to personal issues.
It is a brilliantly bonkers night, one that balances humour and connection with intimate musical celebration and the fire of a community that has, and continues to, mean so much to so many people banished to the fringes of the world.
Black Veil Brides each throw a sweat towel into the crowd, and when tugs-of-war break out, you know it is time to fade into the night.
