During this time of a global pandemic, everyone is struggling to in one way, shape, or form. With states in various stages of lockdown, concerts around the world are being postponed or cancelled. In this day and age when most small to mid-sized bands survive on touring and fan interactions, their only stream of income is gone. We all know bands make very little when it comes to album sales these days, especially when it comes to bands on the verge of making it.
Raven Black released their first single in 2016 and since then, they’ve continued to evolve and transform into their current lineup which includes Muppet on drums, Stitches on bass, The Doctor on guitar, and lead vocalist Raven. According to the bio on their website, their story goes like this:
“A Voodoo Doctor “The Doctor” came across a girl who looked lost and scared. He used his magic to turn her into a doll, but his spell was disrupted from her terrifying and taunting screams, she remained half human, half doll. As Raven lived in the dark world of the Doctor, she secretly learned his magic and conjured up a demon, Muppet, who she made her eternal protector and trapped him inside her heart. The Doctor and Muppet created Stitches to search for those who are looking to join our dark metal carnival world in the 13th hour.”
Their first two albums, Seven Sins and 13, contain loud, aggressive, and pulse-pounding metal anthems that have won them a growing legion of fans known as The Rejects. With a new album on the verge of release, the band was set to open for In This Moment, Black Veil Brides, and Ded on their spring tour. Since the stay-at-home order is in effect, I was able to get in contact with vocalist Raven to talk with her about the new album as well as how this pandemic is affecting the music industry.
Horror Geek Life: One thing I’ve really been paying attention to lately is the relationship you have with your fans. It’s really unique how you interact with them and how they respond to you. It’s not a typical fandom thing.
Raven: Extremely unique, I even find it hard to call them fans. The new fans I can call fans, but the super fans who’ve been around for years are more like friends now. We’ve built friendships and these people are just great people and the level of support they have given us is beyond what I could have imagined. Of course, they support the music, the videos, and the shows but they support me, as a person. It’s just so crazy to me. I don’t call them fans, they’re The Rejects, it just feels better to call them that. The Rejects are all like family, we are like brothers and sisters, it’s a whole different thing.
HGL: In all my years of fandom with bands or actors, I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like that and it’s really awesome!
Raven: It wasn’t planned that way, and it just happened on its own. Everything just sort of clicks.
HGL: Can you give me a little bit of background on the band, or how you took your original concept and morphed it into what it is today?
Raven: The vision has always been there, just certain members we had pulled together from the early days just didn’t really want to do the vision. They just weren’t getting into it, so we had to make some changes early on. Muppet and I have always had this vision and I had talked with my producer about it and we made the decision to seek out members who would be excited and enthusiastic about what we wanted to do.
The first two years, we played different music and everyone did their own thing. I even tried to dress up as The Doll character, but I was the only one doing it so it just didn’t work. It just felt half-assed, so we had to make that tough decision because those members were personal friends of ours. You always want to play in a band with your closest friends, but we had to make that difficult decision. It was a little awkward at first; we didn’t want to lose their friendship but we all wanted each other to be happy. It all worked out, we’re still friends and we’re still close, it was just one of those things.
Chris (Stitches) and Louis (Doctor) are great and we love having them in the band. They’re really attached to this and it was meant to be. In the first issue of our comic book, we kind of tell our stories about how we adopted the personas we use on stage. We definitely created our own characters and I wrote the story around that. The first issue talks about where we came from, our past lives, how we met, came together, and created the dark metal carnival. Issue two is coming out soon and will follow along with our new album. Everything we do has a concept to it, I already have songs for the fourth album and the third isn’t even out yet. The story continues and we will be introducing new characters into it as well.
HGL: You guys were supposed to be on the road with In This Moment right now, but with the craziness of this pandemic everything has been put on hold. How has all this affected you guys professionally?
Raven: It’s absolutely insane! This was going to be the biggest tour that we were to be on, the longest tour we had ever done, and now were not. Nothing has actually been canceled, just postponed until there is a safer time. In This Moment is one of my all-time favorite bands and I have the utmost respect for Maria (Brink) and Chris (Howorth), plus we would have been out with Ded and Black Veil Brides. It was going to be a big, big, thing for us. We have a new album coming out, and it was supposed to be our year. It was really our chance to get the exposure we’ve been waiting for. It’s been a major setback for us financially as well. We are going to keep releasing our music, everything has just been pushed back a bit. We’re getting ready to release a new single at the end of May from the new album, so we’re going to continue to give the fans a new song, once a month until we drop the album. That’s only being pushed back because of manufacturing issues due to the lockdown. I have no idea when we will get the actual CDs, so everything is just on pre-order until further notice. It’s coming out, I promise, just not sure when.
HGL: I already have my copy pre-ordered.
Raven: Awesome! We still plan to give the fans songs from the album on all streaming platforms, but it’s looking like the actual hard copy of the CD will be out in September. That’s what we are hoping for at least. Because of the delay, we want to do something special for the fans who pre-ordered and are being very patient. We want to do an exclusive cover for the disc and possibly a limited edition poster to thank everyone. After that, it won’t have a poster and it will have different cover art.
HGL: Over the past year, you’ve released three singles. Are they going to be a part of the new album?
Raven: Yes, “Carnival,” “He is the One,” and “Risen from the Ashes” are all on it. There’s a total of ten songs on it, eleven if you count the interlude.
HGL: Hopefully a sense of normalcy will start coming back to us soon, but in the long run, how do you think this pandemic will affect the music and concert industry?
Raven: I hate to say it, but I think there will be a whole mess of bands who will be unable to recover from it and end up dismantling. I think labels will suffer financially and will not be able to recoup advances they’ve put out. If the money is spent already, it’s really difficult to get it back with no tours happening and online sales are low. You might even see a lot of bands being dropped by labels moving forward into next year. That’s what I’m predicting.
We’re a smaller, mid-sized band, so what’s really affecting us is the touring because it’s our only means of earning income. In our world, we’re unemployed now or just got laid off. We’re hoping that it’s going to be approved that because of the pandemic, the self-employed will get unemployment. I’ve applied, Muppet applied, but I don’t know if Stitches and Doctor did. I’m just waiting to see what they say, I don’t have an answer yet. Hopefully, we’ll get some sort of unemployment, I don’t think it will be much, but at least we have the stimulus. We have odd jobs or part-time jobs when we come back from tour, but we don’t make enough to qualify for regular unemployment. You’ve seen how busy I’ve been lately; we’re just trying to find a way to cover our merch bill now that we’re unable to tour. Profitability just isn’t in the cards for us right now, so we are just trying to sell as much as we can to cover the bill. No matter what is going on right now, we are still in debt for that. When you’re touring, it’s so much easier to move merch after just having played a show. People are right there, they’re looking to shop, and they have jobs with money to spend at a show. Right now, it’s like a double edged sword. The fans want to support us, many of you have and we’re so appreciative, but a lot of fans just can’t right now. I’ve been doing a couple of different fundraisers for some people who are having a really difficult time right now financially, more so than we are. Did you see my last live feed on Easter?
HGL: I did.
Raven: Then you saw how fans donated different prizes for other fans. So many Rejects were donating merch gifts, but they wanted to donate money. I couldn’t accept money, so doing it that way really made a difference. Not only were they supporting us, but also paying it forward to someone who couldn’t afford it. It’s just a win-win-win all around. It’s a beautiful thing and it’s creating a strong community among the Rejects. I’m really touched by how it’s all playing out.
HGL: It’s crazy to see how this whole situation has brought out the best in people but at the same time, it’s bringing out the worst.
Raven: That’s very correct.
HGL: At least it seems like the best is outweighing the bad.
Raven: Yeah, I think people were skeptical in the beginning but with the numbers growing, they’re seeing it’s not as simple as it seemed. Now there’s the possibility that governors will be shutting down concerts until 2021, when we have a vaccine. Something’s definitely up and it’s affecting the economy. We know that politicians only care about money, correct?
HGL: For sure.
Raven: Money and power, so right now with the economy and the way it’s going, money and power are not so good. Something has got to be really wrong. If it’s affecting money, then they’d want to fix it right away. If they’re not fixing it very quick, then something is very wrong. I really feel for all of our ‘essential workers’ who are out there on the front of it all taking risks to help others. I can’t even imagine their anxiety levels; I have anxiety just going to the store for milk and eggs. I’m there less than ten minutes with a mask and gloves, but my anxiety is through the roof, and they’re there all day. It’s an interesting time, and just trying to stay home as much as possible.
I’ve been keeping myself busy writing the storyboards for the comic book and fulfillment of orders. The Covid t-shirts are out now, so if anyone wants to order we aren’t quite halfway to paying off our bill. Our merch company is based in Ohio, so there was a huge delay. I actually had them keep the shirts so they could print Covid-19 on the sleeves so they were stuck there. I have them now, so it’s good. We have 300 shirts we were going to take on tour so we need to sell as many as we can to cover this bill. They were gracious enough to give us an extension and hopefully we can cover it because I would hate to ruin our relationship with them. We’re going to need them in the future. They’re a great company and are happy that we’ve been sending ‘good faith’ payments as we sell the shirts.
HGL: Do you have any big plans while we’re in quarantine?
Raven: I plan on doing some fun stuff to keep everybody happy and smiling. There’s going to be a Raven Black Doll TV streaming of me doing karaoke, silly karaoke. I’ll be doing some cross-genre, Raven Black spin on things, as the doll. The Doll will sing karaoke and it will be fun. Just think of me in full costume doing “Baby Got Back.” I’m hoping it will bring some laughter and smiles into people’s homes during this quarantine. A lot of musicians are doing serious covers but I just can’t, I’m a weirdo. It will either be on YouTube or Facebook, I’ll just have to get everything set up.
HGL: The Key is the name of the new record, and I’m sure fans are curious as to what they can expect from it.
Raven: I would say that we have listen to the fans, read their comments, looked at what’s been streamed, what they liked most at live shows, and we discovered that they loved the heavy, the melodic singing stuff, and they loved the doll so I call it the ‘trifecta’. We went from an eight, dialed it up to eleven on all three of those and that’s the new album. The three singles we talked about before is just a taste. We really stuck to our sound but there’s one surprise element at the end of the album which is what I call a solemn ballad. It’s going to be a sneak peek into an album we will be releasing in the future. It’s going to be a ballad album called Raven’s Diary. It’s not a metal album, just these dark ballads that strays away from what you might expect from us. It’s a song written for one of our fans. I wrote two songs that fans commissioned and after I wrote it, they really stuck with me so I presented them to the band and it made the album.
HGL: I don’t think I’ve heard anything like that before.
Raven: I don’t follow the rules, and I always try to follow my heart.
HGL: That’s why I’m a fan. I can’t wait to see you guys live again.
Raven: Where did you see us?
HGL: At The Machine Shop last year, when you were on the Cradle of Filth tour.
Raven: Yes! That was a great show.
HGL: We met for a brief moment after the show.
Raven: That’s right, we took pictures!
HGL: Yeah!
Raven: Now, was that show the first time you had heard of us?
HGL: No, I had been listening to you for about a year. I accidently came across the video for “Twinkle Twinkle Little Scars” on a YouTube playlist. That was the first time I had seen you live, though.
Raven: So, whenever I talk to someone about stuff like this I have to ask them a question. Did we exceed your expectation live?
HGL: Hell yeah! I wasn’t sure what to expect, but there was a really high energy and the sound was so tight. I’d seen Cradle a couple of times, Wednesday 13 probably a dozen, so one of the main reasons I was so excited to go was to see you guys. It was badass!
Raven: Thank you so much!
HGL: Do you have anything you would like to say to your fans?
Raven: I really want everyone to just stay positive. It’s just a matter of time but we’re all gonna be okay. They’re not going to let us sit around and starve, we just have to be patient. You can’t worry about yesterday, you can’t worry about tomorrow, you just have to worry about today, right now. I’m more concerned with people who don’t have a roof over their head or food on the table. We’re okay, we have our families, a home, and we’re going to be okay. I just really want to stay positive and to get that message across. That’s why I’ve been doing so many live feeds, giving away prizes, just trying to keep people’s spirits up. Hope, laughter, love, friendship, just keeping that positive energy alive.
HGL: I couldn’t agree more. This was looking like it was going to be such an amazing year for shows, so many great tours.
Raven: I know! It’s such a huge setback for everyone. The big bands who have been around for twenty years are affected, but they’ll survive. The small bands could be swallowed whole, and the mid-sized bands could see paradise within their reach, only to have it yanked out from under them. We were on one of the top four biggest tours in metal this year. This was supposed to be our breakout year.
HGL: I’m not just saying this because we’re talking, but I literally thought when I saw you were announced on that tour that this would be it for you; your breakthrough.
Raven: We were on that trajectory. This was our year, new album, new video, new tour and now all of it is pushed back. We had a fall tour planned too, even bigger, and that may never happen.
HGL: I see Wednesday 13 just announced a tour in September, if it still happens.
Raven: Yeah, their headlining tour. I don’t think it will unless the government allows smaller shows. Seventy-five or hundred people shows maybe, but the amount of money you spend being on the road wouldn’t be worth it. If we were to do shows like that we right now, we would be risking our health, risking our fan’s health, and how much would a promoter pay you with seventy-five to a hundred people? That money would barely cover gas and your driver, then the band’s in the negative. If you sell merch, it will cover your food but people are struggling, so even then it’s stretched. It’s just not the right time.
HGL: Well, I hope things really work out for you guys. I’m a fan and I’m rooting for you. So, thank you for taking the time to talk with me.
Raven: Thank you!
Visit their official Facebook page and website for more info. You can support Raven Black by visiting their Merch Store and pre-order the new album The Key, which will be out soon.
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