Interview by Adrian Hextall / Photos (C) MindHex Media
For nearly ten years, theatrical metallers Ward XVI have been building a world of madness around their incarcerated anti-hero, Psychoberrie. Now, as they unleash the final, brutal chapter of their album trilogy, ID3NTITY, they reveal the shocking reality of their DIY ambition, the grand secret hidden within their story, and why exhaustion feels more fitting than excitement.
There’s a telling pause when you ask Ward XVI’s guitarist and creative force, David Stott (often known as his alter-ego, Doktor Von Stottenstein), if he’s excited. The band are on the precipice of releasing ID3NTITY, the climactic, blood-soaked conclusion to a conceptual trilogy that has been their life’s work for the better part of a decade. For their dedicated fanbase, the self-proclaimed ‘Inmates’, it’s a moment of feverish anticipation. For the band, however, the feeling is something far more complicated.
“It’s not so much excitement, it’s probably relief,” David admits, his voice heavy with the weight of a monumental workload. “The workload has been so great for the last three years. You don’t get time to sit back and enjoy it. It’s just, what can we do next to propel it and promote it? It’s never-ending.”
This isn’t the sound of a rock star bemoaning the pressures of fame. This is the raw, unfiltered reality of being one of the UK’s most ambitious independent bands. While Ward XVI mastermind and vocalist Psychoberrie (Kerrie) is the face of the asylum, she and David are the engine, juggling full-time jobs, raising children, and somehow steering a creative behemoth that demands everything from them. From writing and recording to designing interactive stage shows and programming video art, they do it all.
“It’s just insane when you think about it,” he laughs, a sound that’s equal parts disbelief and fatigue. “We appreciate COVID a lot more now, because we did so much of what we’re doing now back then, but at the moment we’re doing probably two or three times as much. It’s just night and day.”
The project’s ten-year gestation period has, he says, “rattled past,” a snowball of an idea that has become an all-consuming, incompatible force in their lives. The result is a band that has found its confidence and its voice, but has also hit a self-imposed limit. “We’ve reached that kind of glass ceiling with this album,” David concedes. “We know we can’t physically put any more into it.”
A Necessary Retreat
That glass ceiling became painfully apparent with their upcoming album launch show in Manchester. Initially booked for the city’s Academy 2, the band had hoped to build on the success of their packed-out launch for 2020’s Metamorphosis. Reality, however, had other plans.
“We were ambitious,” David says with a sigh. “But unfortunately, with so much happening this year, festivals, clashes, the cost of everything, it was just that step too far. We’ve had to kind of throw in the towel and go, ‘Okay, let’s do Academy 3.’ Make it more sustainable, more affordable. It’ll still pack out, but we’d hoped for a bigger stage.”
It’s a candid admission of the pressures facing independent artists in a post-pandemic world, where ambition often collides with the harsh wall of economics. Yet, it also speaks to the band’s pragmatic determination. The goal remains the same, even if the room is a little smaller: to give ID3NTITY the chaotic, theatrical send-off it deserves, creating a launchpad for a full UK tour later in the year.
The Birth of a Monster
To understand the ambition that drives a band to dream of Academy 2 while operating on an Academy 3 budget, you have to rewind to the beginning. The concept of Psychoberrie, the tormented female inmate at the heart of the trilogy, was Kerrie’s vision from the start. But in the early days, the execution was scattershot.
“She had the storylines, the concept in her head,” David explains. “But the band at the time weren’t all 100% bought into the process. The band would write the music by jamming, and then she would shoehorn the lyrics and the narrative over it. The context and tone didn’t always match the music.”
The stage show was similarly embryonic. “It was we were all just wearing costumes. There wasn’t really a developed kind of world within it.”
The turning point was playing the New Blood Stage at Bloodstock in 2017. It was an eye-opening experience that showed them the potential scale of their vision. For David and Kerrie, it was a profound motivator. For others in the band, it was the peak. “They felt that was as high as we would get, and that’s where their motivation stopped,” he recalls.
A line-up change followed, bringing in members who embraced the theatricality. Inspired by the performance art of bands like Tragedy and Lord of the Lost, and the world-building of acts like Avatar and Evil Scarecrow, they made a conscious decision.
“We stopped compromising,” David states firmly. “We decided to treat it more as a film or a theatrical experience rather than a gig. That changed everything.”
This new, tunnel-vision approach, with David and Kerrie in complete creative control, transformed their process. Songwriting was no longer a jamming session; it became akin to plotting a story. “It was almost like writing chapters of a book. You’d have the start of the story, you know the arc, and you could split it into chapters rather than thinking of them as songs. It makes writing music a lot easier.”
This ethos is what gives their live show its power. From clever, low-budget props like a bed frame painted to look three-dimensional when stood vertically, to a full-blown narrative played out by actors on stage, it’s a masterclass in immersive storytelling.
Staging the Asylum
For the ID3NTITY tour, however, they’re levelling up entirely. “Anything you think you’ve seen before with the stage show… there’s going to be as much contrast between the last stage show and this one as there was between that and The Art of Manipulation,” David promises.
The next evolution involves a logistical nightmare for a DIY band: interactive video projections. While bigger bands like Iron Maiden fill stadiums with video walls, Ward XVI are plotting to bring a similar level of ambition to the club circuit, with an hour and a half to set up.
“Kerrie’s downstairs right now teaching herself how to programme video art that can be projected onto walls, stuff we can interact with,” he says, the pride in his voice mingling with the stress. “When she originally thought of it, you think, ‘You’re crazy. How the hell are we going to do this?’ But it’s pulling itself together.”
This dedication to the spectacle will reach a gloriously messy peak at the Manchester launch. A key part of the new album’s narrative involves a notoriously bloody scene, and the band plans to share the experience. He pauses. “It’s going to be a complete nervous breakdown on stage happening. Once it’s done, we’re just going to be exhausted.”
So, for fans wanting the definitive, “bells and whistles” experience, the message is clear: Manchester is the place to be.
The launch show details can be found here:
Friday 25th July. For details and tickets, see:
https://www.manchesteracademy.
The Sound of Retribution
This escalation in theatricality is mirrored by a significant shift in the music. Where Metamorphosis was introspective, dark, and full of six-minute slow-burners, ID3NTITY is a different beast entirely. It’s angrier, heavier, and more immediate. It is, as David calls it, “the revenge album.”
“For me personally, I wanted an album which was really hard,” he explains. “I wanted to play music that I could just be on stage, close my eyes, and really get into the riffing. A lot of it is kind of Nuno Bettencourt, EVH-style rhythmic playing.”
This contrasts with his own prog and melodic rock influences like Pink Floyd, Marillion, and Iron Maiden, and Kerrie’s punk and contemporary tastes. Together, they fuse these disparate styles into something uniquely their own. One minute you’re hearing thrash-infused hard rock, the next they’re melding it with what David describes as a “ballroom jazz kind of element” because the narrative demands it.
A prime example is the track “I Spit On Your Grave.” The title is a direct nod to the infamous 1978 exploitation film, one of the original ‘video nasties’. “Kerrie wrote the lyrics, but the content and the nature of them were very much based upon that film,” David confirms. “This album is about anger, retribution, and redemption. The title needed to be that because it’s inspired by the film itself.”
The Grand Deception
For years, fans have followed Psychoberrie’s story across two albums. 2017’s The Art of Manipulation introduced her already incarcerated, while 2020’s Metamorphosis rewound to explore her traumatic childhood. The logical assumption is that ID3NTITY is the third and final act.
The logical assumption is wrong.
In a stunning reveal, David pulls back the curtain on the trilogy’s true structure, a secret they’ve kept for years.
“So, Metamorphosis is number one,” he begins, laying out the puzzle. “That’s the growing up. ID3NTITY is number two. The Art of Manipulation is number three.”
The albums were released out of sequence. The story doesn’t end with ID3NTITY; it ends where it all began. And the connection is coded directly into the music.
“If you get time, listen to ‘Amoeba of Madness’ [from ID3NTITY], and then start The Art of Manipulation straight away with ‘Take My Hand’,” he instructs. “See how they link together.”
It’s a masterstroke of long-form storytelling, an Easter egg of immense proportions that re-contextualizes their entire body of work. And the puzzle goes deeper still. “The last song on each album is also their own three-part trilogy, linked in a different time period as well,” he adds, leaving another thread for the Inmates to unravel.
No Rest for the Wicked
With the trilogy finally complete, the launch show looming, and a holiday booked for the brief window between the album release and their appearance at Bloodstock, surely a long rest is in order?
“A couple of months off,” David muses, a timeframe that sounds less like a break and more like a pit stop. “Then we’re planning a spring tour.”
The ambition hasn’t been exhausted, even if the band members are. There are still goals to hit: a tour of Europe, support slots with bigger bands, a chance to take their asylum to the larger stages they feel it deserves.
For now, though, there’s a fittingly spiritual pilgrimage on the horizon. The tour will take them to The Cart and Horses, the legendary East London pub considered the birthplace of their heroes, Iron Maiden.
“I’m looking forward to taking what’s inspired me back to the spiritual home of it,” David says, a genuine note of wonder in his voice. “It’s that going back to the roots of why I started to like heavy metal. It’s going to be nice.”
After a decade of blood, sweat, and psychological terror, a moment of quiet, full-circle reverence feels more than earned. The story of Psychoberrie may be reaching its violent, pre-ordained conclusion, but for Ward XVI, the madness is set to continue. They simply don’t know any other way.
The new album can be purchased \ ordered here:
https://earache.com/collection
https://earache.lnk.to/IDENTIT
The launch show details can be found here:
Friday 25th July. For details and tickets, see:
https://www.manchesteracademy.
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