Audio By Carbonatix
Having a handle like Bleeding Through can be a stigmatic sign of boring generic metalcore or fashion-produced punk made for pimple-faced teens. But this Orange County act is far from sappy, and its members tend to rail against such trite assumptions. Not that the name is entirely off the mark — the band’s lyrical imagery is wrought with inner struggle and an unabashed animosity toward, well, everyone. The Truth, the group’s most recent effort from Trustkill, co-opts both metal influences and the darker side of pop and hardcore. It’s an unapologetic outing that highlights the dim nature of lead singer Brandan Schieppati and the intensity that follows him around like a black cloud. He’s an angry dude, and he’s content to stay that way. For now, anyway.
Westword: Having grown up with a hardcore background, do you ever struggle with staying true to that smaller community while still trying to progress and evolve as a band?
Brandan Schieppati: I think that the more you progress, the more the community kind of turns its back on you. We’re not trying to do this to get cred, you know what I mean? We could put out the same record over and over, and the majority of the kids would still not be into it after a while. We find that most of our shows are 30 percent hardcore kids, and the rest are metal kids and punk kids. When we first started playing, our band was mostly playing hardcore shows, and it was rad. Then we started injecting other elements into our songs, and eventually, most of the hardcore kids just went away. It’s not like we meant to say, “Hey, let’s play shit that’s going to piss you off.” It’s just the kind of music that we wanted to write. But it’s very hard to stay in the limelight of the hardcore scene, because a lot of new bands come out all the time. And it’s always an “out with the old, in with the new” kind of vibe.
How do you stay fresh in a scene that often feels so saturated with crap?
It’s definitely saturated. I think that what sets us apart from a lot of those bands is that we don’t listen to any of them, so we never really derive influence or take a lead from any of them. But I’m not trying to take anything away from those kids. Some of those bands I’ve listened to and seen live and played with, and they’re good bands, and they’re close friends. But our influences are derived from different sources.
Do you ever think you’ll stop being so angry and just sing about puppies or something?
Nah, probably not. I mean, hopefully, one day. Not now, though, because there are so many things wrong in life and so many more things to accomplish in my writing.
