AELONIA jake pitts Counting Stars still

Black Veil Brides’ Jake Pitts talks new project Aelonia

You know Jake Pitts for his guitar work in Black Veil Brides and his deftness in the production duties during the making of the band’s last album, VALE.

This week, Pitts released a video for “Counting Stars,” the new track by Aelonia, his self-described “electronic pop-metal” vehicle with his wife, Inna Pitts, on lead vocals.

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“It’s an Inception-kind of song about holding on to somebody near and dear to you and being stuck in a world where you don’t know what the reality is and feeling like you’re totally alone,” the guitarist says about “Counting Stars.” “But you find something inside yourself to keep pushing forward, and when you least expect it, there’s always going to be someone there for you.”

Getting Aelonia into the public eye took a bit longer than usual. Because Pitts is a member of BVB, Universal Records had first dibs on adding Aelonia to their roster. While that process was going on, Jake and Inna worked diligently in their home studio, writing, recording and conceptualizing videos. Jake produced, mixed and mastered the songs that will appear on Aelonia’s debut album to be released early next year.

“We are literally doing everything on our own,” Pitts says. “We had a couple of our friends help us film the video, but Inna edited and color-corrected it. We initially thought that we would start a full band, but we decided to take it into the realm of a music duo.

“Electronic pop metal is what we’re calling it. We’ve been experimenting with writing electronic, hip-hop and pop songs, as well. Once I got the OK from Universal, we were able to pursue this forward, to release music and do what we want to do.”

Pitts says that while he didn’t have a big budget or a big team to work on the video with him and Inna, he says the process was fun—and harrowing.

“We couldn’t get into one of the locations we had originally wanted to film, and we were up all night trying to figure out what we wanted to do,” he recalls. They ended up lensing the post-apocalyptic shooting in Bombay Beach near Salton Sea, California. Operating on two hours of sleep and driving four hours to the locale, the duo and their friends had to deal with exhaustion, wise guys driving dune buggies and the inevitable.

“In the video, it looks like there’s nobody there,” Pitts reveals. “There are crews of dune buggies and four-wheelers out there, cruising around all day long. I’d be lying in the sand, and I’d hear them revving their engines, and I had to hurry up and get to the top of the hill so they’d see me and I wouldn’t get run over. It was a brutal workout. They would purposely circle around me while we were filming. It was like, ‘Come on, guys, really?’ [Laughs.] But it was cool.

“We got home at 11 that night and had sand in our shoes, socks, underwear—everywhere. It took a week to get it all off. At one shot in video, you can see all the sand that’s up in my nose!”

“Counting Stars” is available on digital sale and streaming platforms this week. Check out the new video below.

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