Bleed From Within: Reaching Their Zenith
Scottish stalwarts BLEED FROM WITHIN have been knocking around the scene for a long while, their earliest incarnation as a deathcore band, but it was with a soft-reset of the band and re-debuting with 2013’s Uprising that we got the hint there might be something more. Then, 2018’s Era started an upward trajectory that’s shown no signs of slowing, as the band continue to refine a hulking, groovy take on modern metalcore that pulls from arena greats like TRIVIUM and PARKWAY DRIVE while stamping their own mark on the genre. This year, they’ve truly ascended with the incredible Zenith.
“It’s been a long time coming,” guitarist and melodic vocalist Steven Jones laughs from his home as we catch up over Zoom a few weeks out from Zenith’s release. He’s referring to the actual release of the album, given they started work on it almost immediately after Shrine released in 2022. It saw them continuing to expand on their sonic palette, with greater bombast through symphonic elements that acted as a stepping stone to their finest work yet in Zenith. He’s also reflective of the past few months, and certainly feels that there’s been a huge upswing in the band since he joined in 2017.
“Doing the tour with SLIPKNOT [in late 2024] really felt like the culmination of the last 8-9 years since I joined. It’s so satisfying, because we’ve been working so hard for so long.” That work ethic is enviable; it not only got them that support slot in the first place, but has seen them rise to festival main stage mainstays. Rewinding a few years, we ask whether their creative process for Zenith has seen them changing anything in their so far extremely successful approach.
“There was definitely something different, a different feeling this time,” he begins, “we view Era, Fracture and Shrine as almost a trilogy. We were in a similar place in our lives and as a creative group across those three albums. With Zenith, it felt like the first time in a while we made a conscious effort to step outside of that.” The approach, initially proposed by drummer Ali Richardson, was to turn back the clocks and ask themselves what bands and songs excited them when they were first getting into heavy music and how they could re-interpret that today. “That really excited me,” he recalls, “I remember saying ‘I love that, because I’m going to write stuff like MESHUGGAH and AFTER THE BURIAL‘, and do some different things that I’ve done so far.”
He wasn’t the only one excited by it; guitarist Craig ‘Goonzi’ Gowans was also inspired as Steven explains. “CHIMAIRA and DECAPITATED are pretty big influences on his writing. It was really cool to approach the album in a different way. We’ve also changed the art and have a different mixer for the album, so it really was us saying ‘let’s try something different’.” The results speak for themselves; Zenith is a triumphant album that takes in some of their biggest choruses to date (like the Brann Dailor-featuring Immortal Desire) to most savage mosh parts (see the demented “I will fucking hang you” call in Chained To Hate).
Crucially, it never loses that BLEED FROM WITHIN DNA, something credited to Goonzi’s songwriting as having something quintessentially them, as much as Scott Kennedy’s full-throated roar or Ali’s thunderous, grooving drum work. “The identity of our band, the core of BLEED FROM WITHIN is that we’re a bunch of Scottish dudes making metal music,” is his simple assessment of it. “There aren’t too many Scottish metal bands so it’s something we’re really proud of and try to embrace.” They’ve embraced it alright; In Place of Your Halo features, of all things, a bagpipe section over its breakdown, one that fits alongside the rest of the track with ease.
“Goonzi has a great story about that!” He grins. “He was up North, and saw a marching band with bagpipes. They were marching and playing at the same tempo of the song, which he was demoing at the time.” That led to the simple, natural conclusion – the song had to have bagpipes. They also got to play that with live bagpipes on the SLIPKNOT tour, at Glasgow’s Hydro arena. Not exactly bad going, for representing Scotland. “That part probably would have been similar without them, but bagpipes helped embrace our culture and it was something really exciting too.”
All that said, Zenith wasn’t originally going to be Zenith. “We were going to call it Zero,” he recalls, given it was them returning to their roots, “but then LINKIN PARK announced they were releasing From Zero and we had to come up with another one!” A quick suggestion from Ali meant they were back on track, even if the album now took on a new meaning. “It was scary at the time, but it’s worked out for the best. It’s interesting how malleable it’s turned out to be as we were gutted, genuinely sad to change it!”
Zenith is the perfect descriptor for it though; the band are operating at the peak of their creative powers, and they’ve never been bigger. There’s a tour on the horizon for the end of the year, with the biggest venues they’ve ever headlined, including the legendary Barrowlands. “At the end of the day, we couldn’t do this without people supporting us and it’s so cool that so many people want to come and watch us headbang for an hour. We’ll always appreciate that.”
Zenith is out now via Nuclear Blast Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS120 here:
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