Photo by Stevie D. Buckcherry have a busy year ahead of them with the release of their sixth studio album ‘Confessions,’ which drops Feb. 19. They are also in the midst of a U.S. tour with Kid Rock that runs through early April. Loudwire had the privilege to speak to frontman Josh Todd about the new album and the things in his life that influenced its theme of the seven deadly sins. We also discussed the film project he is working on to compliment the new disc. Check out our interview with Josh Todd below: You’ve said that ‘Confessions’ is based on the seven deadly sins, and I’m wondering if you can expand on that and also tell me what the album title means to you personally? There was a point in my life – when I was a youth, when I lost a family member and I acted out in my grieving process through the deadly sins so that’s kind of what the story’s about on the record. I think the seven sins are timeless and that everybody struggles with them in their daily lives all the time – it’s something that we’ve been throwing around for a long time, [guitarist] Keith [Nelson] and I as far as doing a record. There’s a lot of people who’ve done it but we wanted to do our take on it and I feel like we really did it justice. As a lyric writer, I wrote all the lyrics — it was really challenging for me and fun, as well. When I sit back and listen to this I’m so proud that it’s part of the Buckcherry catalog. The record makes me look at the seven deadly sins in a different way – when I listened to ‘Sloth,’ I didn’t expect it to be so soulful. When thinking about specific sins, did you already have a certain direction in your mind that you would go with them? I’m glad you brought that up about ‘Sloth,’ because nobody’s really talked about it. That was the hardest song for me to get through. When you look up sloth it relates to suicide and my father committed suicide when I was 10. It’s about how I felt when that happened – when he actually called my sister and I on the phone that night before he did it. I can’t remember what he said to me because I was just too young to process it. He was just saying goodbye and I didn’t know what that meant, until the next day. It was heavy and I struggled getting through recording those vocals and Keith worked with me and was really sensitive about what I was going through to get it out, but I think it turned out to be really beautiful. There are songs named after the seven deadly sins, but there’s a total of 16 tracks on the record. How did you choose what other songs would accompany the theme of the album — such as ‘Nothing Left But Tears,’ ‘Water,’ ‘The Truth’ etc. I wrote a short film to go along with the record and we’ve had such a hard time with the funding and we’re still working on that. The original idea was to have the record be the soundtrack to the film and we wanted to incorporate some of the elements like ‘Air’ and ‘Water’ and that’s why those are there. ‘The Truth’ coincides with the love interest in the story and it’s a real beautiful story but I also wanted to write songs that were memorable and mean something to somebody else not just me and what I was focused on at the time. That’s part of the challenge with writing songs – you want to take enough of your personal experiences so that you can get excited about performing it every night and you can go back to that place and get motivated because you have to sing your songs thousands of times. What did you notice about writing a screenplay that differed from writing songs for you? I’m a really big fan of storytelling and writing and I read a lot of books and I’ve done some acting and I’ve read a lot of scripts. Maybe about six or seven years ago I took a swing at writing a screenplay on my own, and I wrote a comedy actually, and Stevie D., our guitar player read it at one point and was like, “Why don’t you ressurect a character that was in the comedy?” and make it about this film. At the time I was just writing a screenplay based on my life so I just combined the two. What’s the progress on the film project? We got a great director, his name is Billy Jayne and he just directed both of our first two videos ‘Gluttony’ and ‘Wrath,’ and we introduce the character in the movie. His name is Gilby Stretcher. He basically is me in the movie as an adolescent 17-year-old kid. It’s going to be good, it’s a beautiful little journey about a kid that comes home from school and finds his dad dead and acts out through his behavior and the seven sins and then finds a love interest. In the end, he forgives his father and his this girl that he’s down with who’s the complete opposite of him. It’s really cool. If you had to choose a well-known actor to play you in a biopic, who would it be and why? Let’s see I’d like a young Leonardo DiCaprio. He did ‘Basketball Diaries’ and I think he’s just a great f—ing actor. I’m a big fan of his and I think he’d do a good job. ‘Confessions’ is the sixth studio album for Buckcherry. How was the recording process of this album for you? This record took a long time and it was aggravating at times – a lot of writing and re-writing, we just put a lot of work into it. I think it’s going to pay off and I think it’s our best record, honestly. As a whole, as a body of work, I think people will take us a little more seriously than they have in the past. We did it again with Keith [Nelson] who produced it with Marti [Frederiksen] and that’s how we’ve been doing the last two records so that was familiar which I like. I like having Keith there because he and I have a long history and I can talk to him in ways that nobody understands. What is one of your favorite tracks off the record and why? Probably the one I’m most lyrically proud of and spent a lot of time on is ‘Pride.’ I think that’s a very cool song for us and really off the beaten path. It was more poetry, that song and I’m a big fan of The Doors and Jim Morrison. I wanted a song that was poetry and the verses are like that so I’m proud of that song. Buckcherry’s ‘Confessions’ drops on Feb. 19. The album is available for pre-order in a few cool bundles through the band’s merch site or digitally via iTunes .  [button href=”http://loudwire.com/buckcherry-josh-todd-new-single-gluttony/” title=”Next: Josh Todd Digs Deep Into New Single ‘Gluttony'” align=”center”] Check Out the Video for Buckcherry’s New Single ‘Gluttony’