Bleeding Through
The Great Fire
Rise Records
30 January 2012

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It appears that Bleeding Through isn’t quite paying the bills because hunky singer, Brandan Schieppati has gone all social media with his Rise Above Fitness personal trainer scheme by putting a fitness regime online. The only evidence of any of this, however, is on Facebook so it might all be total (medicine) balls.

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Bleeding Through
Bleeding Through (S/T)
Rise Records
13 April 2010

by Hugh Platt

Californian metalcore troupe, Bleeding Through, have not had an easy run of things. Hamstrung by popular and critical expectations after the band picked up one too many “next big thing” plaudits in their early days, the manner in which they found themselves bounced around from label to label (particularly internationally) and the long and costly dispute they found themselves in with their former label, Trustkill Records, over unpaid royalties, didn’t make matters any easier.

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Bleeding Through
TBC
Rise Records
Summer 2010

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Not sure what you should be getting up to in the next four weeks when you’re not dodging outbreaks of Swine Flu? Thrash Hits has some recommendations.

Sweet Drunken Bank Holidays ahoy! That’s what we like best about May – two four-day weeks, and two three-day weekends. They’re the perfect excuse to do even less work and spend even more time eating, drinking, listening, watching, and shoving metal into every orifice we’ve got going. We’ve picked 3 albums, 3 tours, and 3 events to help you select when, where and how you choose to stuff yours.

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Bullet For My Valentine are playing in front of about 9,000 people. Slayer did the same thing last month but with a much stronger supporting line-up and over two nights. Some might say there is no justice.

The fact of the matter is that Bullet For My Valentine are a Top 5 charting band in the two most important countries and they sell records to the people that matter – people that actually give a shit.

Bullet sell records to the people that will also show their love for a band by actually turning up to see them play the songs on that record.

Yes, large portions of those people are very young girls, ably escorted by similarly young boys but don’t let that fool you.

Their brand of modern metalcore is absolutely not as true to traditional metal as many demand. That’s what makes is modern rather than traditional. The years don’t start with the number 19 any more, FYI.

This is a band that is going to be around for a while yet. This is no flash-in-the-pan pop band. They write real songs for real people.

Take the chap to my left in his mid-40s, for example. To him, this is as real as any metal band. His hangover, tomorrow morning, is testament to that.

Bullet For My Valentine, Lacuna Coil, Bleeding Through and Black Tide @ Alexandra Palace photo gallery by Graham Pentz

After three days or heavy metal at Castle Donington for Download Festival 2008, Thrash Hits .com looks back on the weekend. Hugh Platt picks the most memorable moments.

Most Impressive Pit
Bleeding Through’s metalcore barrage managed to whip the mosh pit into a maelstrom, coaxing out a circle pit around the entire sound desk for new track, ‘Orange County Blonde and Blue’.

Most Bottled
“Oh shit, we’ve been set up,” cried Lethal Bizzle, after walking out into a hail of bottles not seen since the Daphne & Celeste Massacre of 2000. Bizzle countered this by shouting his own name, seemingly as many times as there were half-drunk cups of beer thrown in his direction.

Most Brutal
For sheer brain-and-ball-busting brutality, nothing came close to Ted Maul. From the moment they walked on surrounded by scantily-clad dancing girls, the London six-piece ripped into the Gibson Stage like a burning Panzer tank with a death metal penis cannon.

Biggest Cock-Up
It has to be Ginger from The Wildhearts for having the plug pulled seconds into set-closer ‘29x The Pain’. The frontman blew most of his bands’ slot joking with the crowd about the projectiles thrown at him.

Most Impressive Crowd
Despite a late-afternoon slot, drum’n’bass-types Pendulum drew a crowd big enough to shame many headline acts. Never mind that it sounded as dangerous a skinhead poodle, half the festival seemed to be at the second stage for their remix of ‘Voodoo People’.

Best Comeback
After the slowly diminishing returns of Sepultura and Soulfly, there were doubts about Cavalera Conspiracy. After a brace of Sepultura classics, a quick blast of Nailbomb, and a rendition of ‘Roots Bloody Roots’ as fierce as anything we’d been dreaming of during the years when Max performed it with his gang of hired hands, the Brazilians seemed a tribe reborn.

Biggest Surprise
With ‘Fuck Lostprophets’ t-shirts for sale on the merchandise stands, the Welshmen had a fight on their hands to show they deserved their headliner-status. When they closed the festival with a blistering ‘Burn Burn’ – literally, as the asymmetric fringes of the front rows were almost singed off by a rack of flamethrowers that probably cost more than their entire debut album took to record – the reaction they got proves that booking Lostprophets was money well spent.

Biggest Disappointment
Kid Rock being “too ill” to play, despite tabloid reports of the redneck partying in London the night before. And especially because his absence led to an extension of…

The Worst Performance
If ‘Mad’ David Draiman’s identikit-metal was half as dangerous as the Hannibal Lecter garb he dons for his stage entrance suggests, we might’ve been entertained, but Disturbed’s performance was as pedestrian as a lollipop lady’s day at work.

The Best Performance
This weekend, KISS stood head, shoulders, and ridiculous platform soles above everyone else. From ‘Deuce’ all the way to ‘Detroit Rock City’, from the tip of Gene Simmons’ monstrous tongue to end of the zip line Paul Stanley swung out over the crowd on during ‘Love Gun’, KISS backed up their claim to be the biggest live act of the planet with enough pyro for a Baghdad wake-up call.

Check out the rest of Thrash Hits .com‘s Download Festival 2008 coverage here, here and here.