Lilith Czar, courtesy Jeremy Saffer.

The pandemic offered time for self-reflection and awakening for so many, including Juliet Simms. Enter Lilith Czar and exit Juliet Simms… by way of death… in a music video.

“I experienced a few things that year that I only experienced because I was a woman,” Simms said about songwriting in 2020. “I had had enough and so I snapped.”

The Warped Tour vet started in the business with a record deal at just 15. She finished as runner-up on the second season of “The Voice.” But she felt she was lacking the creative control of her own musical trajectory. So as Lilith Czar, she decided it was time for a dramatic shift that would require a bold artistic move.

“I know who I am; I know what I want to say. I’m not letting this happen to me anymore, and I don’t want it to happen to other people anymore,” she said. “If I need to kill off my former self to make a point, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”

She said that killing off her old persona was one of the most creatively daunting ventures of her career. The planning process took about a year, which included shooting videos and plotting the social media rollout. The story then unfolded over 12 weeks, culminating with Simms’ “death” in the video for “All American” and rebirth as Lilith Czar in the video for “King.”

“It was extremely time consuming, but probably one of the most fun things I’ve ever done as an artist,” she said.

Lilith Czar’s Created From Filth and Dust is some of her most heaviest material, both lyrically and musically. Each track is an anthem of empowerment, defiance and self-respect.

Lilith Czar performs at Aftershock Fest in Sacramento on Oct. 8, 2022. Photo: Steve Thrasher.

“Artists innately are constantly evolving and creating themselves and changing,” she said. “Created From Filth and Dust was the most accurate representation of what I wanted to do at the time.”

She discovered Lilith Czar accidentally halfway through writing the album. The name a reference to the goddess “Lilith,” combining it with Czar to blend a masculinity and a femininity together.

“Music is therapy. It’s healing, it changes you, it inspires you, it makes you a different person,” she said. “Through the writing of it I changed—I was writing songs and changing as a person and changing as a woman.”

Now in the midst of working on her next record, she said fans shouldn’t assume what’s coming next.

“I’ve toured for over a year now; I have new thoughts, new ideas,” she said. “My next record is gonna be how I am now; it’s a constant evolution.”

Simms was born in San Francisco, but moved to San Diego at about a year old before moving with her family to Clearwater, Florida, so doesn’t remember living here, but joked that she can still stake a claim as a Bay Area native.

Aside from music, she acted in Amazon Prime musical TV show “Paradise City,” a follow-up to the film “American Satan,” which starred her husband, Black Veil Brides’ Andy Biersack. He also starred in the TV show, while Simms played Sheva, the singer in a band. She recalled the experience as “terrifying,” adding that luckily, the character of Sheva is a reflection of her own life. That made it easier to place herself in the role as the singer of a rock band.

“I had grown up doing plays in school, my sister is an actress and has been doing it since she was a teenager,” she said. “I don’t know how to be anybody else but myself.”

“The times when I really felt like I did a good job were when I absolutely let my guard down and I didn’t give a shit how I looked,” she said. “If you just don’t care about making a fool of yourself, you’re gonna do good.”

In 2023, Lilith Czar will hit the road with Biersack, playing a string of dates with Black Veil Brides in the United Kingdom—a continuation of the road warrior momentum she built last year while opening for Evanescence, Halestorm, The Pretty Reckless, Black Veil Brides, Ice Nine Kills and Motionless in White.

“Going out with Amy [Lee] and Lzzy [Hale] filled me with so much feminine energy that when I went out for two months with just men, I was filled with such a female empowerment that I was, like, ‘I’m gonna fuckin’ show these boys!'”

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.