If there’s one thing that’s clear about Andy Biersack, frontman for the hard rock band Black Veil Brides and comic book creator, it’s that he absolutely loves Batman. After partnering with DC on Batman projects and merchandising to help commemorate the Caped Crusader’s anniversary, Biersack voices the iconic Dark Knight in the soundtrack album for Dark Nights: Death Metal. Executive produced by Tyler Bates, the concept album is a tie-in to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s epic crossover event of the same name. Biersack also contributes tracks to the soundtrack, teaming up with Bates and Grammy Award-nominated artist Maria Brink.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Biersack delved into his deep love of Batman, shared the joys of collaborating directly with artists of Bates and Brink’s caliber, and explained how he found his own Batman voice for Tyler Bates’ Dark Nights: Death Metal soundtrack.
Andy, you’re a huge DC Comics fan. Do you remember when Tyler approached you to be a part of the Dark Nights: Death Metal soundtrack?
Andy Biersack: Yeah, I kind of joked that this was the first time I was allowed to officially be Batman. In my headcanon, I’ve been pretending to be the character for all thirty years of my life. We had just gotten word that the tours were postponed and the touring industry had shut down — this was very early in the pandemic — it was kind of that floating period where none of us knew what was safe to do or what we could do, trying to find a creative outlet. I had built a small relationship with DC over the years just due to my pretty overt Batman fandom. I had done some collaboration work with them for the 75th anniversary of Batman with Hot Topic and threw it out there that if there’s ever something I could get more involved in, let me know.
I got a call from Tyler Bates who, at the time, I didn’t know at all. I knew of him, of course, I’m a big fan. The first time we talked, I joked I was staring at the Watchmen soundtrack vinyl on my wall while I was talking to him. [laughs] He just said he was putting together this animatic series for the book and there was going to be a music offshoot and other things and would [I] be interested in playing Batman. For me, the answer was a pretty resounding yes. It became this kind of fun thing I got to do early on, sitting in my studio recording my voice as Batman and finding what my Batman voice would be. As the restrictions became more clear, I started to be able to go to Tyler’s home studio and record there. Not only was it a dream to be able to play the character but a really necessary, creative outlet in a crazy time. To have an opportunity to do this was just an amazing experience.
Tyler was saying you were one of the biggest fonts of DC information for this project. Do you remember what your gateway into DC and the Dark Knight was?
I was a kid when the Burton and Joel Schumacher movies were coming out and that was an impetus for me to get involved with the character. My first Batman movie experience was Batman Returns. When [Batman] Forever came out, I was the perfect age to be obsessed with everything Forever-oriented. From a comics perspective, we had a small comic shop near the house where I grew up at. My dad worked late some nights and he would come home and bring me a comic book. The first book that I had was the introduction of the Azrael suit for Jean-Paul Valley as Batman. I actually have that tattooed on my arm. It’s the cover of that book and it was a foil cover: you flipped it and it was the traditional Batman and the new suit.
Weirdly, my introduction to the character in the books was Jean-Paul Valley playing Batman and I just fell in love with the suit and the idea of it. Through the movies and Batman: The Animated Series, most ’90s kids have some level of enjoyment with the character because it was so pervasive in all of pop culture but it connected with me on a level that never really stopped. It became a deep, deep obsession of mine. To this day — whether it’s a source of information or the way my mind works — I like to collect knowledge or historical information about the character’s derivations. When it comes to songwriting or creating my own characters, I often reference things I found in comics. It’s been hugely impactful for me for my whole life.
While you’ve been Batman in your headcanon for some time, what was your personal mark that you wanted to leave on such an icon?
Maybe because of my age range, Kevin Conroy is the voice of Batman. The difficult thing to do was to not do a Kevin Conroy impression and try to find out what my own Batman voice would be because I wanted to lend something to the character that felt like it fit within the context of what we know the character to be but also still sounds like me. It doesn’t sound like I’m doing an impression of somebody else. That was probably the most exciting thing, to find my Batman voice and stylistically go through different things and try to figure out what my Batman would sound like.
It’s such an interesting book and just the concept of a myriad of different Batmans and different eras being in this multiverse situation where there are all these different planes of existence and different representations of the character. It was a lot of fun to watch that all play out and see how my characterization of Batman, as the traditional Earth-1 Batman, how that played in with Darkseid Batman and all these representations. I think the biggest thing for me was to just be able to lend what I saw as a traditional voice styling for the character.
How was it getting to work with Tyler Bates and Maria Brink on this record?
This isn’t to say I haven’t had the opportunity to work with incredible people, I’ve had quite a few, fortunately, but those moments where you walk into a situation and you just know that the people you’re working with are better than you at what they’re doing, to me, that’s an exciting feeling. That’s not to say that I don’t meet a lot of people who are better than me but the moment where you walk into something and this person has a skillset where, even if I tried, I couldn’t get to. Who they are as an artist is so uniquely talented and interesting that you can just try to sit back and take in what’s there and learn some information on a collaborative level for what to do in a space within it.
Being able to work with Tyler and Maria is a masterclass, people that really know what the fuck they’re doing and are just a joy to work with. I’m used to my own kind of world-building and creating characters, whether it’s for comic book series or records, so to be able to step into something where I’m just serving as a vessel for characters and the sonic world that has already been created. It was just a fun experience for me because it was nice to be able to just step back as opposed to be the impetus for the start of something.
As someone that’s gotten to branch out and do comics yourself, with Z2 Comics and Black Veil Brides, what do you find personally and creatively fulfilling in that medium that you can’t necessarily get on stage or on a record?
A lot of it just comes down to your interests. For me, because that’s my point of view since I’ve been reading comics since I was so young, I see the world of art through that lens. To be able to work through that style of art that I relate to is just thrilling. Also, we talk about Batman — a character who has been around for 80+ years at this point — all those different iterations of that character are legitimate. You can point to the Adam West version of the character and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns version and they’re both wildly different but both valid versions. The thrill is, especially with the “Blackbird” and Phantom Tomorrow series that we’re doing with Incendium, we’re able to create a character that you can put through time with all these different iterations.
Part of the joy of creating a comic book character is to have this thing that is unstuck from time. Music — regardless of whether your best effort is to make something that is timeless, that’s what everybody wants — ultimately is going to be a product of when it was released. When you listen to something thirty years after it comes out and say that really holds up, it’s still a record that came out thirty years ago. In the capacity of comic book characters, the character and iconography of the character, particularly the most successful ones, exist throughout time. Maybe the stories feel antiquated, but when you read a Comics Code Batman where he’s a zebra, the character remains as Batman. That character still exists and you can drive to a comic shop and pick up a modern Batman story and it’s the same character as those different versions.
Music is the thing I most closely identify with but a record that was done by a band forty years and one done today. They’re different bands. They may have the same name and everything else but they’re real people whose lives, circumstances and abilities have changed. With a fictitious character like Batman or Superman, they have not been burdened by reality and can be placed in different eras in time and validities.
This is true for other genres but it’s so apparent in metal: What makes metal lend itself so well to lyrical storytelling?
For lack of a better term, what people call epic. The fact that you have, particularly power metal and these other genres, the goal is to make something massive. The symphonic elements of metal that some people don’t necessarily understand are hugely important. Maybe someone listens to Metallica and doesn’t understand how symphonic that is and how the structure of those songs lend itself so well to this large-scale storytelling and world-building. There are more overt things, like with Ronnie James Dio you know this is about dragon-slaying but, in many cases, just the idea of heavy metal and hard rock is so operatic and larger-than-life.
On a personal level, those of us who feel like we’re outcasts from society or that we don’t fit in, those things are part and parcel. Those fantasy worlds and finding a way to get out of the drudgery of the world you exist in on the real plane of life, to find a world you can escape into in heavy metal, comic book and action figure collecting, whatever it is, those are all things that have that escapism and brings these things together in a unique way. If the world outside doesn’t understand, it doesn’t matter because there’s this world inside that I can live in, read, and be about to feel safe.
I’m going to put you on the spot. You’re stuck on a desert island, what are your go-to Batman comic book stories?
I’ve been revisiting a lot of older stories that I haven’t read in years. I haven’t read the complete “Hush” collection in a long time and I forgot how awesome it is. I love stories that take a character that you don’t associate with as one of the top-tier rogues gallery — maybe I’m wrong but I’d never see Riddler as top-tier — and a story like “Hush” makes them, not only a real threat but something up in that top-tier.
On a personal level, “Knightfall,” “Knightsend,” and “Knightsquest” are all so important to me and because there are so many [issues] in those. You could probably live off of those. I also enjoyed the early 2000s, bringing back Jason Todd. If I had to pick two, I would say all of “Knightfall” and “Hush.” I’m going to change my mind after we’re done… The Long Halloween, Dark Victory. We literally have a framed Long Halloween concept sketch in our living room.
How does it feel to go out on the road with your collaborator on this project, Maria Brink?
It’s the incredible feeling of getting to do the thing I’m supposed to do. It’s sort of this weird thing where, as a musician who’s been doing this a long time, I’ve spent the last twelve years of my life spending eight to nine months of the year on the road playing shows and connecting with people in a one-to-one way and then it was just gone. You figure out how to reassemble your creative life in some way and it’s almost like being able to exhale — going back to the thing that is the most inspiring and unique part of being a musician.
Other art forms, like comic books, can add to something after the fact but it’s always going to be that thing. If I do a painting and decide I want to add to it, it’s still the same painting with a little more added to it whereas, with live music in any genre, you can play a song in Milwaukee and change the melody or structure and that Milwaukee show is its own entity: the next night in Chicago, you can change it up again. As an art form, live music is this unique, fluid thing that lives and breathes. I’m really looking forward to getting back to that level of connectivity on a daily basis.
Dark Nights: Death Metal Soundtrack is executive produced by Tyler Bates, who also performs alongside several artists on the all-star lineup. The special edition vinyl album is available to order now through Loma Vista.
About The Author
