Interview: Bleed From Within At The Download Pilot

Scott & Allie from Bleed From Within get to offload about what makes for a great playlist, playing to 10,000 fans at Download, and having to postpone their album launch tour. Mark Bestford digs into his Scottish ancestry to make sense of it all as he chats to the Scots from Glasgow

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One of the questions I normally do is called Apocalypse Playlist but we’re at Download, so we’re changing it slightly. We’re doing a Download Playlist. So both of you pick whichever band’s song you would put on your playlist first for driving down to Download?

S “Driving down to Download? I feel like a good one just for the laugh would be The Book of Heavy Metal. Just for the giggles.”

A “Aye, just for the LOLs. Pantera, Where You Come From. To be honest, any off 101 Proof usually just gets me up for a gig. Just a live Pantera tune.”

S “It’s a good question. I’d like to see something from what the proper nu metal generation maybe something like Limp Bizkit My Generation. Something that’s going to get me in the mood for a festival, you know, maybe not sort of thing I would listen to, like, constantly in my own time, but if I’m trying to get in the mood for a festival.”

Looking at getting into the mood for a festival, you’ve got 10,000 people out there. What’s it like to actually see moshing again?

S “That’s what we were talking about just before, we’re like surreal. I says right before we started, I was like it kind of feels like I’m dreaming, like how is this come around? So I mean, it’s not came around so quickly, but it’s almost just came out of nowhere for me, I don’t know.”

A “It’s picked up picked up where we left off essentially. But it’s what a feeling man, we were just talking about that energy that you get on stage, you can’t get it anywhere else. There’s no feeling like it and as soon as that intro started, we held the crowds. Fuckin roaring man, it’s a drug we cannae get enough of.”

It’s a bit of a smaller crowd this year

A “It dinnae feel like it.”

S “It really dinnae, honestly it dinnae.”

A “For the 10,000 folk that were out there it felt like 80,000. It felt like it was a filled capacity that was incredible. The organisers and the audience, like what a job. What an effort to bring that energy, bring that feeling to us, what’s meant to be a small event?”

S “I cannot give enough props to the Download organisers for pulling this off, in the time that they have and how well it’s been organized and how a professional everyone is. It’s just amazing.”

Lots of things have been postponed, for most of the country. Dis you have to postpone any of your show?

A “Yeah, we had a lot of stuff lined up last year. This year everything that we’ve got in place is going ahead at the moment, just fingers crossed it’s all we can really do.”

S “I definitely think is looking a lot more positive now with the vaccine rolling out because I feel like the whole point of lockdown was to take the pressure off the NHS and I feel with the vaccine rolling out now that that is going to happen, so I feel like now it’s just a matter of just actually opening things up and just taking that it’s going to be here from now on and we just need to get back to normality. As shit a situation that it is, I feel that we just need to get back to it now.”

A “It’s a difficult thing to comment on.”

S “It’s definitely a difficult thing to comment on, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I genuinely I just feel like it just feels good to be actually feeling like we’re back to normality again and that’s what this weekend definitely feels like.”

A little bit of normality in what feel like a lifetime of madness.

A “Aye, the industry needs it you know, I think that’s what Kennedy’s referring to. The industry has suffered, it’s been suffocated. To have an event like this just gives us some hope that the amount of people that have lost our jobs because of the lack of touring and then the lack of support from the government and stuff like that, to have an event like this is that light in the dark, I mean like holy fuck, we could actually be back to something here. And you know, we’ve all got aside of the band, so we’ve actually been alright, but we’ve got so many of our mates have just had to, you know, take up jobs in other places and people just aren’t returning to music anymore. I’ve seen so many people just feel like ‘I can’t afford to do it. I’ve lost everything’. So, fingers crossed.”

S “I just realized how bad that sounded. I don’t mean that. I mean, I feel like we’re at a point now where the pressure has definitely lifted slightly and we just I feel like we just need to get over it again.”

So when are you now back on the road again?

S “November. We’re doing a UK and European headline tour first.”

A “First thing we’ve had, we had three headline shows in 2018, small headline shows, but this is our first full UK European tour since 2010.”

How are you finding the European side of things?

A “Well it’s going ahead at the moment. I’m looking forward to it.”

S “I have every faith it’s going ahead.”

So with Brexit and everything you’ve managed to get a full tour?

S “Yeah, the thing is as well, like we obviously released our album over lockdown and the headline tour was initially postponed to November this year. It was supposed to be last year. But it’s kind of a bittersweet thing, because the album we released during lockdown has been like, in terms of streaming numbers and stuff, our most successful album. I don’t know if that’s because people don’t really have a lot to do and they’re just sitting in and they’re getting more time to sit and listen to music because they’re not working and stuff. It’s been getting our music in people’s ears and people seem to be liking it.”

So have you been finding yourself doing more writing with not being on the road as well?

S “Well, yeah 100% yeah. We’ve been, it’s probably too soon to say but we’re well into writing for the new album.”

A “Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve been working on behind the scenes as well and just excited for getting back to this normality really, just to show everyone what we’ve been working on.”

So not doing a Taylor Swift and pulling 2 albums out the bag completely by surprise then?

A “It’s hard enough for us to write one album so we’ll take it one step at a time.”

S “It definitely takes us time to write one album, so we’re not going to put out something that we don’t think is pristine.”

What are your biggest musical influences?

A “Pantera, Lamb of God, Tool, Incubus, Mastodon, Gojira. Yeah.”

Basically anything loud and heavy.

A “Pretty much, I mean that’s the cream of the crop right there for me. Pantera got me into this. Lamb of God in my early teens, still to this day, and then I guess recently, Gojira. Aye, that is the kind of progression of it for me. Those bands heavily influenced our sound, with the grooves and the melodies of stuff we’ve employed, stuff like that. That’s my take on it.”

S “Pretty much agree with that to be honest.”

Most bands have a band rider, what’s the most ridiculous thing you’re ever put on one?

A “Well we’re not that big so we cannae ask for anything.”

S “We’re pretty easy going guys. Probably the most annoying thing for promoters especially in like Europe is trying to find Irn Bru. We always put Irn Bru on our rider. A taste of home when we’ve not been home in a while. No we’re pretty easy going, we’re just happy to be there so don’t really ask for more.”

Along with lockdown a lot of people haven’t been about to go out as much, so there’s been a lot of Netflix and Amazon Prime shows airing. Anything got you hooked on TV or not.

A “I watched Ozark at the start of last lockdown. Ozark and Handmaid’s Tale.”

S “It’s one of those things where you’re on the spot and cannae think”

A “Ozark, Handmaid’s Tale, what was the superhero one again?”

S “Oh, The Boys, I watched that, that was amazing.”

A “The OJ Simpson one as well. The people versus OJ Simpson.”

S “That was amazing.”

A “Mindblowing. Only 8 episodes as well so it wasn’t too mental, not like 20 fucking seasons to catch up with like Game Of Thrones or something.”

Have you caught the second series of The Boys yet?

S “I watched the whole thing. I’m a huge friends fan as well so always end up finding my way back to watching friends from start to finish again, I love Friends man, not my actual friends though.”