May 21: My band -- Black Veil Brides -- and I head to Rock on the Range in Columbus, Ohio. We flew in the night before from Los Angeles to play the festival. As we are pulling up to our backstage area, massive amounts of people are walking up to the gates to enter.
We arrived, already in full stage makeup, ready to go. We had a couple hours to kill before we hit the stage, so Jinxx and I decided to head over to the FYE stage to check out Asking Alexandria. We went up side stage and ran into the legendary Sebastian Bach! He was there to perform "Youth Gone Wild" with AA.
After standing side stage for about a minute, he comes over to Jinxx and me and asks, "Where are you guys from, you look great!" Photos started being snapped, and then he ran out to perform and tore it up!
We head back to get ready to perform at the Jagermeister stage at 3:45 p.m. As we hit the stage, people are pouring in from all over, filling the stairs and walkways in the stadium. During our set, we played two brand-new songs from our new record, Set The World On Fire, which will be released June 14. The first of the two, "God Bless You," people really got into it. This was a track nobody has heard yet.
The second of the two is our new single, "Fallen Angels." The set seemed to fly by, but it was awesome seeing Sebastian Bach rocking out side stage with us the whole time. He hung out after and took more pictures, and is now becoming a good friend of ours.
Jinxx and I had a photo shoot and round table interview with Ben and Cameron from Asking Alexandria for Guitar World later on, then we went to watch Korn perform. Those guys are still killing it.
By this time, drinks are flowing and everyone is having a blast, and the headliner, Avenged Sevenfold, hits the stage. This was my fourth time seeing them live. They had loads of pyrotechnics lighting up the night with fire.
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As they closed the night and the crowd of 35,000 people left, the night didn't end for us. Sunday night we flew back to Los Angeles, where we will rehearse for another week before heading to Germany, Austria, Copenhagen, Sweden, Scotland and England for a festival run, where we will be debuting more new songs live before the new record is released.
Then you can catch us on Warped Tour all summer.
Jake Pitts plays guitar in Black Veil Brides, whose highly-anticipated sophomore effort, Set The World On Fire, is due out June 14 on Lava Records.
