Album Review: Wretched and Divine: The Story of the Wild Ones by Black Veil Brides

With their third album, Black Veil Brides complete their transformation from a heavily made-up metalcore band to a full-fledged gothic glam metal band, mixing drama and swagger on the sprawling and conceptual Wretched & Divine. Channeling the freewheeling power of Mötley Crüe into their moody sound, the album finds the band really carving out a niche for themselves among the faceless waves of metalcore/post-hardcore acts. While the 19-song Wretched & Divine is ostensibly a concept album complete with a two-act structure and recurring elements, stripping those elements away reveals an album that is, at its core, a pretty straightforward set of ripping glam metal.

Full Review >>

Few bands have generated as much spittle-flecked opprobrium in the metal world as Black Veil Brides. Thanks to their flamboyant glam-rock image and penchant for radio-friendly pop hooks, the band have become massively popular among sullen, kohl-eyed teens and reviled by almost everyone else. The band's third album – a rock opera, no less – is harmless and likable enough, with plenty of blistering guitar solos and muscular riffs bolstering an overall atmosphere of neutered rebellion.

Full Review >>

Review Summary: The first over-anti-hyped album of the year, Wretched and Divine is a bland album marred by a lack of imagination and poor execution.I honestly cannot recall actually listening to Black Veil Brides, and that either makes me the most blessed man on the internet, or makes me entirely unsuited to writing this review. Every once in a while though, someone just wants to watch the world burn, and instead of blowing up an action figure I figured I’d give their new record a gentlemen’s chance. From what I understand, Wretched and Divine: The Story of the Wild Ones is some massive concept album, and if my limited internet research is correct, they’ve released or are releasing a film to coincide with the album.

Full Review >>

This review originally ran in AP 295. Here’s the one problem Black Veil Brides will always encounter: No matter how good their music is, there is a reasonably sized portion of the population who will never hear it primarily because Black Veil Brides still look like Black Veil Brides. That’s bound to turn a number of people off from the get-go. To those detractors, we say this: You should know that this is one hell of a rock record.

Full Review >>