Exordium is an intro to the record
It's a spoken word piece
It's sort of, ah—I was watching the movie 'Stigmata' right before making the record
And one thing that fascinated about the idea of there being - I guess - an unknown history of these religious characters that people have come to know or worship
It allows for people to write their own stories
And I've always thought that, as in terms of our art or whatever else
It's, it's important to want to, I guess create your own characters
And it sort of sets the tone for the record
Well, people look at the darker side of our lyrics
Or look at the things we support or the things that we say
And there's a lot of discussion about whether we are an anti-religious band
Or that we are, in fact, a religious band
You know, there's a lot of discussion about what it is
And I like sort of ah-, I guess how ambiguous that is
And to that, I would just say that we are Black Veil Brides
And I grew up with a deep passion and love for all things religion, and particularly Catholicism
I grew up in a Catholic family and it fascinated me
Now I don't particularly subscribe to the belief system
But the idea that people have faith or need to have faith makes perfect sense to me
I understand why people are faithful and things
I understand why the need for hope exists, because without hope, there is really no tomorrow
So, we open the record by saying the kingdom of god is inside you and all around you
And basically meaning that whatever your god is, whatever that is
That's you and you have to build that for yourself
And so that really sets the tone, I think for the wild ones and for the whole story
Basically saying they have created their own path