BLEEDING THROUGH

by Myk

GET IT ON

Bleeding Through came into town as part of a tour with Saosin and Senses Fail. I grabbed the opportunity to sit down with lead singer Brandan Schieppati and get some information about the band, their current album, The Truth [Trustkill] and what will be coming up next year. Brandan was one of the most genuine band people I’ve met in recent memory, and they put on a hell of a show that night as well. Here’s what happened.

Under the Volcano: You guys come from Orange County, which has a really rich Punk Rock history...

Brandan Schieppati: Yes it does.

UTV: Do you find that the fact that you don’t sound like any of those bands has helped you or hurt you?

Brandan Schieppati: Let’s put it this way: I think that in the early ‘80s--when there was bands like The Adolescents, Social Distortion, Black Flag and all those bands from Orange County--there was also stuff in the early ‘80s like very sunny and very, you know, late ‘70’s disco shit was going out. It was just a crazy kind of time, so they just were sort of the anti to what was going on at the time. Then when music started to evolve through Orange County, there was Punk Rock, and then it started to get really sunny. It started getting really sunny with bands like No Doubt and Lit and all those bands. Then there was an uprising of a lot of heavy music, so I think it again became the “anti” of what was normal. I think it actually really helped because it was so against what was so popular in Orange County at the time and that it stuck a nerve with people--because not everyone can connect with what Gwen Stefani has to say about fucking life. Nobody really wants to hear it anyway.

UTV: I hear rumors that there’s going to be a vinyl version of the new album?

Brandan Schieppati: I hope, that would be great! That’s the first I have ever heard of that.

UTV: I guess I beat you to the punch.

Brandan Schieppati: Cool. Then yes, there is going to be a vinyl version of the new album. I’ve been trying to get some vinyl pressed out of it because I never had a band other than 18 Visions that actually had vinyl pressed. I’m looking forward to it.

UTV: Since you brought it up, what led you to decide to leave 18 Visions and end your partnership with Throwdown?

Brandan Schieppati: At one point I was starting Bleeding Through--I was the only guitar player in 18 Visions and I was in Throwdown as well. Then Keith [Barney] from Throwdown–who’s no longer in the band--Keith at the time started playing for 18 Visions as a second guitar with me, and I just decided to kill one of the bands. I couldn’t give all my energy to one of the bands, I kind of had to concentrate my energy to other things, so I quit Throwdown to do all my writing in 18 Visions and Bleeding Through. Then, eventually, I went from being one of the sole writers in 18 Visions for about six years, to I would show up at practice and they wanted to go a different way. They had another vision; they had another dream and it wasn’t my dream, and it wasn’t my vision anymore. I started touring a little with Bleeding Through, and the sense I got from Bleeding Through was “Wow, this really means something.” Getting up on the stage and playing, I feel something when I’m doing this, and the crowd feels something too. It was something I was never really accustomed to before. It was an easy weeding out process. I just feel that Bleeding Through, to me, was more in my heart and more my band, and more something that was meaningful to us.

UTV: You just got the chance to interview Danzig for Revolver . Aside from the obvious interview, what were your impressions of him?

Brandan Schieppati: Dude, I was so scared to fucking interview the dude, straight up. I’ve only heard that he was a big asshole, and then right before we went on--right before we did the interview--I got a call from one of my friends who said “You know what? I’ve met Danzig before a bunch of times, he’s really fucking cool. But he has this knack of being able to see through really cheesy people, and if he thinks you’re really cheesy, then he’ll be a total fucking prick. But, if he knows that you’re just like, a dude, then he’ll be totally fucking cool.” So I was like, “Great. I’m gonna get evaluated in like three fucking seconds by Glenn Danzig, to find out whether I’m cheesy or not.” So he cruised up, he was really cool, shook my hand and he had a smile on his face, and said, “Let’s go do this.” We sat down at a table. I ate lunch with him for like, three hours, and I was just so shocked by how genuine of a person he is and how he’s had a vision, and he had his way of doing things, and he stuck to it all these years. Like, “It’s my way or the highway,” and I really respect people like that. You know, he has a bad rap because he doesn’t take shit from anybody. People who don’t take shit and don’t compromise get a bad rap for being an asshole, or whatever they want to call him. He was really cool, and he said some really cool things to me that I’ll probably carry forever. It was awesome.

UTV: An extension of that is, you have a band called Die Die My Darling.

Brandan Schieppati: Yeah, it’s just sort of a cover band that I do with a couple of the dudes from 18 Visions and Bleeding Through’s manager, Ryan Downey, who sings. We’ve only played a couple of shows, since we’re never all really home at the same time. Hopefully we’ll be doing more shows because lately we get a lot of mail, website and MySpace traffic for it, and it’s really weird. It just covers Misfits songs, and I kinda want to try and cover some Danzig songs as well.

UTV: Are you a Samhain fan as well?

Brandan Schieppati: I like Samhain as well.

UTV: Tell me a little bit about the new album artwork. You all have various parts of your bodies bitten off...

Brandan Schieppati: It’s so funny because I really wanted to try and make this thing visually different than anything else that’s been out there and my vision was just to try and make it really dark--black and white and stark lighting to it. Have things really somber about it. Then, the people that did the layout had this idea of creating holes in us and doing something different that way, and I was like, “Fuck yeah, I love it.” I love it, and I think a lot of people get into it. It’s really gory and you look at it and just think, “This is really fucking awesome.” It looks real; they did a really good job on it. It’s a shame that records don’t sell anymore, because people will never see it or appreciate it. I think if it came out about five years ago, we probably would have sold more records just because of the layout.

UTV: What are the differences between recording with Rob Caggiano and Ulrich Wild who recorded This Is Love, This Is Murderous ?

Brandan Schieppati: Ulrich was very new to our kind of music, because he’s done bands like Static X, Deftones, he worked on that and Pantera’s Great Southern Trendkill–which was cool, but his only glimpse into the world of really heavy, heavy type of music. So, working with him was cool because we were sort of new to him and he was new to us, and we sort of fed off these really new ideas. But, I think in the end it became a total clusterfuck. Our songs became too long, and there was too many parts. With Rob, he was just like, “You know what, you guys do this good, you do this bad. We’re doing this, we’re going to work on this and interject with that a little bit if you guys get better at it. I want to use the things that you guys do well, things I think you guys do well and trim the fat of your music.” And that’s what Rob did, really kind of like a drill sergeant for us. He was like, “You know what? I know you love this part, but it doesn’t work. It just jumps out of nowhere and you can do without it.” So, okay, we scrap it and keep going.

UTV: What do you see as the difference between being on a label like Indecision versus being on Trustkill?

Brandan Schieppati: They’re both independent record labels. Indecision was a great label to be on; we had the opportunity to do whatever the hell we wanted, but he just didn’t have the resources to kind of...we kind of started making leaps, and fell back behind a little bit with his record label. Things like, we wanted ads for our tours, we wanted certain things like that, and it just wasn’t in his funds. And that was one of the hardest things we’ve to do was leaving that label, because Dave [Mandel], the guy who runs that label, is one of my closest friends ever. Trustkill was just a logical step as it was still an independent record label. We still got creative input, output and got to do what we wanted to, but there’s just more backing to it.

UTV: You’ve played with bands like AFI, Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed and now Senses Fail. An extremely wide range of bands…

Brandan Schieppati: And then there was Cradle of Filth...

UTV: Do you think the diverse crowd that you’re now attracting has been harder to go over with, as opposed to playing to one singular type of crowd or fan?

Brandan Schieppati: You know what? I’ve always sort of prided Bleeding Through on being a band that people would think would only appeal to a certain type of kid, but we’ve gotten on these tours and done really well. I think with any band that sells over a certain amount of records, it can’t just be that crowd, there has to be some kind of crossover. Then, when we headline it’s a big, different group of people. It’s like Punk Rock kids, metalheads, Hardcore kids, there’s, like, Goth kids. And then there are girls that listen to like, fucking Justin Timberlake and Bleeding Through, and it’s the most bizarre thing ever. I don’t see the correlation, but it’s just what happens. Everybody--no matter what kind of person you are--they kinda just find a little place for Bleeding Through if they get exposed to us. So that’s what we try and do this tour off this record; we’ve done a headliner, we’ve done Ozzfest, the tour with Unearth--they’re kind of the same tour. We really hadn’t had an exposure tour, so when this one came up, we said, “Let’s do it.” There have been some naysayers, people saying, “Bleeding Through doesn’t belong on this tour,” and if last night was an indication of how this tour is going to be, we’re going to be just fucking fine. Those people will shut up forever. I feel if there are kids watching us, we can make an impression.

UTV: What can you tell me about the limited version of This Is Love…? There’s some extra stuff on it.

Brandan Schieppati: Yeah, there is like a glimpse, interviews about the lyrics, then there are three live songs and some behind the scenes footage.

UTV: Is there something like that for The Truth ?

Brandan Schieppati: We are working on hopefully something for The Truth; the way I’m envisioning it, I want to do something like a short documentary and have it be more like a film. Really sort of artsy.

UTV: You briefly touched on Indecision. How do you feel the band has grown since Portrait of the Goddess ?

Brandan Schieppati: With Portrait… it was weird, because I think that record is so unique and still stands out from our other records. Because we were so new to Bleeding Through...? The music that we were doing was so not being done that much before, so it was a chance. We wrote it and recorded it in like and were like, “Fuck, kids might not like that, but I love it so let’s fucking do it!” Now, I think we’ve grown as musicians, and become able to formulate the Bleeding Through sound, which is sort of a bad thing and kind of a good thing because we’re more professional about the way we write music. I kind of want to go back to the formula of Portrait of the Goddess for our next record, where I want to do things that I don’t think anyone is doing. ‘Cause let’s face it, this market we play for--this Metalcore or Metal thing that’s going around--people always asked me questions years ago, “Do you think it’s going to get over saturated? Do you think it will be the new NuMetal?” I was always like, “No,” but reluctantly, I was like, “I guess it might be.” I think it’s kind of reaching that point. I think only the strong will survive; the only way they can do that is by challenging themselves musically, and that’s something I want to do on the next Bleeding Through record.

UTV: You have a DVD out called Wolves Among Sheep , it contains a lot of stuff, about five hours worth. If you could pinpoint one moment on that disc, what’s your favorite?

Brandan Schieppati: My favorite part of the disc is in the extra scenes--when they’re filming Chris Simms, who’s one of our video directors. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but lightning struck and he was all like, “What the fuck!?” ‘cause that dude is out of his mind, and for that to happen to him at that point was absolutely perfect. I love that part.

UTV: The current tour takes you up to December 21. What do you guys have planned for ‘07?

Brandan Schieppati: This tour is going to be the last tour for us in the States on this album cycle. After this tour we’re taking a little bit of a break; Marta [Peterson, keyboards] and Derek [Youngsma, drums] are getting married, and I finally get to go on my honeymoon. In February we’re going to Brazil, and then we’re doing Japan. Then we go to Europe and the UK. Probably going to Australia one more time, and then hopefully do one of the summer tours, not Ozzfest this year, either Warp Tour or Sounds of the Underground, or something like Project Revolution. They’re putting it together right now, I think it’s something like Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, and they want to throw a band like us in the mix, which I’m all for. It would be good.

UTV: You just recently came of tour with Unearth and Through the Eyes of the Dead, and you mentioned that’s more of the directly Metal direct sort of tour. Do you find that when you have a bunch of bands that are similar, that it’s detrimental on the crowd?

Brandan Schieppati: Yes. Kids get bored. I’ll be straight up be honest. I think kids get bored when they see the same “like” band. With our last headlining tour, we brought Every Time I Die and Between the Buried and Me, and they were the fine line of being different enough to make it interesting for kids. This tour is great. A band like Bleeding Through and a band like Senses Fail and a band like Saosin–different bands. It’s cool. Kids want to see it and kids want to hear it. It’s how it was in the early ‘90s.

UTV: How does being on a show like The Tonight Show help or hurt you guys?

Brandan Schieppati: I don’t know if it’s done anything. It was cool just to say you’ve been on it, and a lot of people say it was kind of funny--they always see Bleeding Through as being this serious band. I guess it kind of shows that we aren’t as serious as everybody thinks. But I don’t know if it has really helped or hurt us--it was just something cool that we got to be a part of.

UTV: You donated a signed guitar to photographer Keith Kojira’s daughter Rhiannon. For those who don’t know what’s going on...

Brandan Schieppati: She has Leukemia and I know there is one other type if cancer. They are just trying to raise money for her bills. As with a lot of people in this country, even if they do have health insurance, it’s not gonna cover it. So it was just something cool that we got to do.

UTV: A lot of your songs seem to deal with a lot of broken hearts; is this all hypothetical or is there something that this all stems from?

Brandan Schieppati: It is something that this all stems from. You know, the songs all come from the same person. It stems from about a five or six year span from my life where I had to just deal with this over and over again. Little pieces would just keep reminding me how bad everything was, how I would finally get over something and it would interject itself back into my life. It’s kind of just singing about going through bullshit, but having the power to get through it. I chose to write about it because a lot of bands helped me get through stuff like that on those problems and subjects, so that is why I do that. I want that emotional connection with the kids, and it’s something I’ll probably carry with me forever. I’m married and I will probably still carry a little bit of the scarring.

UTV: The new Trustkill comp came out, and there’s an unreleased track. Where is that from?

Brandan Schieppati: We went in there and just recorded a couple of tracks. We kind of wrote that song pretty quick and put it out. We just had fun recording it.

UTV: I know a lot of bands end up with weird bonus songs on releases overseas because of the laws. For the kids here, are there songs they should be looking out for that you don’t have here?

Brandan Schieppati: Fuck, man. We have a bunch of cover songs that we’ve done, and we’re kind of just keeping them under raps because if we do do a rerelease of The Truth , if we want to do a bonus disc as well, we’d want to do a bunch of cover songs of bands we liked over the years. Like the Misfits, Unbroken and Black Flag, and stuff like that.

UTV: Last one. One of the guys in your band does the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. He does like a kick flip.

Brandan Schieppati: Oh, yeah, that’s Ryan [Wombacher, bass].

UTV: The bass player. Where does one learn to do that?

Brandan Schieppati: Oh man, he’s like a monkey. I don’t understand. He can jump like a million feet in the air and he is like 5’ 3”. He’s one of those little kids that’s so flexible you can throw him down a flight of stairs and he’ll just get up and say, “Alright, okay.” But he kind of did it our first show we ever had him in the band, and the rest of us were like, “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?” It was cool, it just kind of stuck. X