Extreme Metal Of All Varieties
Trawl through the tour history for Bleeding Through and one band keeps cropping up. Just going back to 2006 you discover that the Orange County band have shared the bill with a certain crop of Welsh metallers a hand full of times already. This year alone they have already been on the road with them and that’s before starting this slot, a tour that will take them virtually up to Christmas in support of Bullet For My Valentine. So, when lead singer Brandan Schieppati boasts on stage that there are no egos on this tour, you get the feeling he’s a guy who would know, after all, the amount of time these two bands have spent together there can’t be much they don’t know about one another.
With the room thrown into darkness, a blast of atmospherically dark music pulsates through the crowd; in fact, late comers would be forgiven for thinking goth metallers Lacuna Coil were taking to the stage. Suddenly though such delusions are shattered as the six members of Bleeding Through bombard the stage, raging aggressively into their set with an adrenaline stoked rush of enthusiasm that instantly ignites the crowd.
Charging recklessly around the stage, Schieppati is a dominant front man, effortlessly controlling the crowd as he growls and snarls his way around the band’s intricate guitar lines and ferociously crushing beats, wasting no time in jumping into the ecstatic crowd. As a call for two circle pits is met with unquestionable enthusiasm, its obvious that Bleeding Through have the crowd eating out of their hands, indeed its testament to them that one of the requested circle pits is boasting a guy boldly styling some air guitar antics slap bang in the middle, although perhaps with a tad too much concentrated thought going into his actions.
But Bleeding Through is all about crowd interaction. Drawing attention to security, Schieppati’s later request is for everyone to crowd surf up and high five him, which of course they dutifully do as ‘Kill To Believe’ emerges in a hail of frantic guitars, crashing beats and even some layered synths from the only girl in the band, Marta, tucked neatly behind her keyboards to one side. It’s the black metal riff or ‘Orange County Blonde And Blue’ that pushes the crowd to near riot status though as the bone shattering power house of the song is thrown full force across the room, smashing and pummelling with extra bite and attitude as the Orange County band bring to a close another slot with Bullet with as much adrenaline fuelled eagerness as if it were their very first.