Yesterday, Black Veil Brides' bassist Ashley Purdy appeared on Another FN Podcast and heavily suggested that the band was done. One problem: he didn't exactly talk to the rest of the band about it.
Here's what Ashley said:
“We start Thursday at Warped Tour in Pomona, [California] and we are going to do eight dates through the southern California area," he said. "And that is where you are going to see Black Veil Brides for the last time ever in your entire lives. So, you better fucking go, because that's gonna be it." He later added, "You better see us before you don’t see us.”
"To be honest you guys already know that Andy Black is doing his fucking next thing so the rest of us are going to do something separate and easy. Nothing more, nothing less."
Andy Black, the frontman of the band was caught off guard with the declaration and quickly told AltPress that is not the case:
“This is the first I’ve heard of any ‘break up.’ As far as I know, there are no plans to end the band after Warped. Or, at least if there were, I was not made aware of them.
We are in the early stages of work on a big 10 year retrospective release. And my personal focus as it relates to BVB are on that and these upcoming Warped Tour shows.”
Later, in an interview with Loudwire, Black elaborated:
"As far as I know, there are no plans to break up the band," he said. "I spoke to the band this morning, and that seems to be echoed by everybody. I can’t really speak to any comments about the band breaking up, because I was never aware of that. As far as I know, that isn’t the intention, and it certainly isn’t my intention."
"I can say that I’m aware that there have been conversations about various side projects and things that people wanted to do," Black said. "And, as always, with any band that’s been around for a while, that’s encouraged. People want to make different types of art or music, there’s never been anything but encouragement as far as that goes. I can say that yeah, there probably will be supplementary projects coming up from different members of the band. But as far as the band ending after the Warped Tour, that certainly isn’t my plan."
Black also said he spoke to Purdy and everybody is on the same page:
"I have texted with everyone in the band, and everyone’s on the same page. Ashley said it’s not his intention to leave the band. Or, at the very least, he said to me that that [comment] wasn’t representative of his feelings. And that’s kind of it. Look, at the end of the day, it’s five grown men with five different opinions on things. We’re not the Monkees. It’s not a situation where we all live together in a house and share all of our meals. People have differing opinions on things, and people might feel one way in one moment and another way in the next and that’s life. Maybe at the time, that’s what was felt, but I can’t fault someone for thinking or saying something that they felt differently about later. I think we all do that. The truth is, unless I’m made aware otherwise of plans to end the band, I will just move forward with the intention of being the same guy in this band that I’ve been since I was sixteen years old when I started it in Northern Kentucky. It’s been my entire adult life, and I’ve been very lucky to meet the four other members of the band when I moved to Los Angeles, and we turned it into this thing that it is now, and now it’s very much a living breathing band with opinions and ideas."
Black revealed that the band will be heading into the studio later this year to re-record their debut album. Read the full interview for all the plans at Loudwire.
Ashley Purdy just chimed in on Twitter saying his words were taken out of context:
https://twitter.com/AshleyPurdy/status/1009831106030419968
