BLEED From Within are entering what could be a landmark year for the band.
The Scottish metal crew have been turning heads across the world, prompting an invitation to play at the legendary Download Festival at Donington.
Currently on European tour with thrash legends Testament, they will headline their own UK tour, stopping at Leeds Cockpit on April 25.
Guitarist Craig ‘Goonzi’ Gowans, took time out of his schedule to answer a few questions.
What was it like being asked to play Download?
It’s an honour, Download is such a legendary festival and it’s really important to us as a UK band, with there being bands from all over the world it kind of feels like we're representing UK metal.
We played in 2009 when we were still a young band and we didn’t really know what to expect.
After playing a lot more festivals over the years we feel more confident this time around and we can concentrate on smashing it and showing the UK metal crowd what we’re made of.
Can you give us a bit of background on your rise through the metal ranks that has brought you to the point where you’ve signed to Century Media and started to go on huge European tours? What have the highs and lows been?
It hasn’t been an easy road, there was a time where we didn't know if we’d ever get to release our third album and we were unsure of our future.
These were problem with people surrounding the band, not the band itself, so at no point did we ever think of giving up. Century Media came and saw us at a festival in Belgium one summer and we started talking.
Right from the start they have been behind us and really believe in what we’re doing, they genuinely love the music and do it because they’re passionate about it.
Even though we saw the side of the music industry no one should ever see, we’ve still played a lot of amazing shows and we hope to continue that after the release of the album, it’s the culmination of two years of hard work and determination.
A high point was touring with bands like Soilwork who we look up to so much, getting to share the stage with them was an honour.
We also had the pleasure of touring with Suicide Silence before Mitch passed away, (their frontman Mitch Lucker died in a motorcycle accident last autumn). He was an amazing person and a great dad.
As part of the Suicide Silence tour we played at Graspop festival in Belgium in front of 13,000 people, our largest ever crowd which was insane, it blew us away.
