Scotland’s Bleed From Within has evolved into one of the heads of the new wave of modern metal. Releasing their aptly titled new album Zenith in the wake of a massive supporting bill opposite nü-metal legends Slipknot – and ahead of the biggest headlining run of their careers – the Glasgow quintet has cause to stop and smell the roses. But anyone who thinks the band is an overnight success isn’t aware of two decades of living the grind.
“It’s been crazy man. We’re very very aware of how long we’ve been a band and the level of shows that we’ve done and what’s happening now,” said founding Bleed From Within drummer Ali Richardson. “It’s very cool to see. I think it’s a testament to our resilience and everything that we’ve been through. And it’s also our personalities, man, as a group of guys from the outskirts of Glasgow that we’re very grounded and very rooted and as a group of guys that just love doing what we do and hanging out with each other.
“It’s very surreal to see it get to supporting Slipknot in these arenas and shit like that, coming on to some of the main stages at the festivals in Europe that we’ve been touring for the 10 plus years, 15 years even. That’s what we said at the end of last year, it’s a good time to be in Bleed From Within and it’s the first year of our career.”
“It took us 19 years to be able to say it’s a good time. Honestly, I don’t like to say lucky because I don’t believe it’s luck. We’ve put the hours in. I’d say we’re very grateful and we’re very fortunate to be in the situation that we’re in. We have worked very hard, and are very appreciative of the support that we’re getting now from existing fans and then new fans that are getting on board with the band as well. We’re growing and it’s very exciting and fun to watch.”
Reflecting on their humble beginnings in the mid-2000s, cutting their teeth in Glasgow’s underground metal scene, Richardson recalls less glamorous days of gigging “down south” to London, Manchester and Birmingham and to a time when local audiences were less supportive of the budding metal hopefuls.
“I mean, really digging into the memory banks there, man, 20 years. It’s been a lot of beers poured on top of that, but no, honestly, man, when we were starting, I played in another band with Davie, the bass player of Bleed, me and him had a band with his now wife, Louise, and we were touring and gigging, and that was my first show outside of Scotland, was with this other band called Paradox.
“We played down south in this fucking shitty little old man’s club, somewhere. It was god-awful. The band that took us down there were a band called Akron, they were kind of black metal-y almost, but what we were doing was kind of heavy at the time and they took us out and then that went into Bleed From Within as well and one of our first ventures down south was in 2007. That was our first tour. I remember it vividly, April 1st to April 5th, 2007.”
“I think what we noticed very quickly was there’s just not much going on you know and I think every band that starts in Glasgow or in Scotland, it was pretty shitty and pretty hard to get fans on your side as well. I feel like Scottish, very hard to impress, you know? And I think because you’re homegrown talent as well, it’s just a bit like, who the fuck are these guys?
“So at that level and at that age, you didn’t really have the respect of the kind of the older metal crowd or whatever. And we just had our mates come into shows and we’d done well for that level, you know? But it wasn’t anything crazy. But what we started to notice with the introduction of MySpace and stuff like that was just like… we have to move, do you know what I mean? We had to get out of Scotland. And I mean that purely in a gigging sense. We had to play further afield because there wasn’t enough attention there.”
And gig they did. Slowly at first, before catching the attention of more prominent promoters labels and bands, earning key support slots opposite Sylosis (for whom Richardson drummed for 2014-16 before joining full time in 2019), While She Sleeps, After The Burial and All That Remains at the dawn of the 2010s, slowly building their profile in the United Kingdom.
“I mean, at that stage, man, when we got in a van and had like a string of five dates that weren’t in Scotland, we were like, fucking yes! That was insane, man. And all of our mates were like fucking hell, Ali‘s going on tour, you know? It was just like, yes! Telling my mum and my dad and my brother that I’m going on tour. And then like this minibus pulled up and it’s just all seats and we were sleeping on the floor and getting drunk before we played.
“Strict, like pretty much no drinks before we play, man, and we’ve been like that for a long time now, but when we were that age we were just fucking idiots. So yeah, I’d say that was the level that was we’ve got a tour that wasn’t any shows in Scotland. It was all down south and we were like, we fucking made it. How wrong we were. I mean even now, success is such a crazy concept and idea.
“We’ve been going for 20 years and we’re still a new band to so many people and I like that. We just had it on the Slipknot tour where we were going out in cities and countries that we’ve played for 15 years or whatever. You’re going out in front of these crowds and you’re like no one fucking knows who you are. It’s 17,000 people in fucking Germany, and obviously there were some people in the crowd (who knew them), but at the barrier, all the people that had paid extra money were your VIP Slipknot fans.
“They were all like who the fuck are these guys? So that lights a fire under us. We really enjoy winning over an audience, winning over a crowd. We really thrive in those festival environments, unknown environments, especially Kennedy, the frontman. He loves it when he thinks he’s got an uphill battle. It’s kind of a hill to climb.”
One particular hill Bleed From Within had to trudge traverse came in the form of a pair of support slots opposite thrash titans Megadeth and Testament in 2013.
“It was fucking hard man,” Ali admits of the assignment. “Don’t forget as well, I mean, we’re all mid-30s now. Steven‘s 30 this year. We were in our early 20s. What’s that? 2025, it was 12 years ago. I would have been 22. And we looked young and that’s the important thing here. Like all these guys and their fucking battle jackets and all that in their 40s and just like pointing at us being like who the fuck are these kids? Kennedy at the time still had a bit of a fringe going on which didn’t help matters, but we looked like kids.”
Rewinding to one particularly daunting gig in Glasgow, Richardson remembers battling the ire of the ardent Megadeth diehards towards the melo-death upstarts who weren’t initially buying what the hometown boys were selling.
“I’ve never felt so small on that stage. It was a tough crowd. We won crowds over on every show. I’ve got a great story from Glasgow, where my mum and dad and my brother were at the show and they were standing next to this guy at the bar, two or three guys, and we started playing and the guys were drinking, they went, oh this band’s fucking shite! This was in Glasgow. And at the very end of the second last song, before we played the last song, Goonzi just finishes a solo and then the intro started for the last song and the guys finished their beers.
“Maybe they were just drunk, but they all turned to each other and they were like, they’re actually pretty fucking good! That was kind of the response that happened throughout Testament and Megadeth and stuff like that. And like I said, it really lit a fire under us. And I remember just we walked out on stage at that fucking show, man, and felt so small. But we just fought with it and you end up winning people over.
“I think that’s just the story of our lives. You know, we’ve never been the cool band. Any success that people think we have now, supporting Slipknot or whatever, that’s not just overnight, that’s fucking 19 years of graft. I think I said before, that stuff’s very humbling for us and we love it. It reminds us why we do what we do, because ultimately we’re just on stage playing our instruments.
“It’s very honest, it’s very real. You go out there, you practice, you warm up, you write the songs, and then you go out and you just present your case and you just fight for it, you know? And I love the idea of doing that in front of people who don’t really know who you are. It’s obviously fun when you headline and everybody knows who you are, but when there’s a bunch of people you’re trying to win over, we thrive in those situations, man. It’s fun to see.”
Zenith is available here via Nuclear Blast. Bleed From Within will hit the road across Europe with After The Burial and Great American Ghost as support. The tour kicks off on September 10 at Zappa in Antwerp, Belgium and wraps up on October 12 at Barrowlands in Glasgow, Scotland. Tickets are available here.
9/10 Antwerp, BEL Zappa
9/11 Cologne, GER Live Music Hall
9/12 Hamburg, GER Docks
9/13 Berlin, GER Kesselhaus
9/14 Warsaw, POL Progresja
9/16 Helsinki, FIN Tavastia
9/18 Tampere, FIN Olympia-Kortelli
9/19 Stockholm, SWE Kullbem Fryshuset
9/20 Gothenburg, SWE Pustervik
9/21 Oslo, NOR Vulkan Arena
9/22 Copenhagen, DEN Amager Bio
9/24 Prague, CZE Meet Factory
9/25 Budapest, HUN Barba Negra
9/26 Vienna, AUT Simm City
9/27 Munich, GER Backstage
9/28 Zurich, SWI Komplex 457
9/30 Villeurbanne, FRA CCO La Rayonne
10/1 Toulouse, FRA La Cabane
10/3 Lisbon, POR LAV Lisboa Ao Vivo
10/4 Madrid, SPA Sala Mon Live
10/5 Barcelona, SPA Razzmatazz 2
10/7 Paris, FRA Bataclan
10/8 Tilburg, NET 13 Poppodium
10/10 London, UK O2 Kentish Town Forum
10/11 Manchester, UK O2 Ritz
10/12 Glasgow, UK Barrowlands
Source: metalinjection.net
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