Having released their last album called “Subjects” in October 2012 , Pistoia, Italy’s MESHUGGAH and NORMA JEAN-inspired mathcore band BLEED SOMEONE DRY is gearing up to produce more distorted sounds and broken riffs this year! I caught up with them to talk about their legacy, local music scene and plans for the future.
Hey, buddies! What’s up? How’s it going in Pistoia? :)
Hi Karol,
First of all thanks a lot for the opportunity you are giving us through IDIOTEQ! It’s a real pleasure being featured on your webzine.
Here everything is fine. The summer is approaching and the heat starts to fill the air, however our attention can’t focus on holidays! Right now we’re working hard to get our third full-length album completed, we are really engaged in songwriting, producing – those will be our primary tasks at least until the end of July. Then, on July two of us – Jonny (Guitars) and Alfeo (Drums) will support the band THE WAY OF PURITY during their European Festival Tour as special guests.
When they’ll come back, we will restart working on our next album. So, it will be a very busy summer and I don’t think we will have enough time to enjoy the nice weather!
The music business has changed drastically in the years your band has been together. Regarding both the band and your surroundings, what are some of the main changes you’ve observed?
BLEED SOMEONE DRY was founded in 2006. During these 7 years the underground musical scene has profoundly changed.
In the early 2000s, if your band would had a great sound and great musicians, you could have had the chance to play everywhere – there was a different attitude, everyone, venues too, were interested in invest time and opportunities, promoting great underground bands.
Nowadays, at least here in Italy, if you don’t give any warranty (i.e. a x-number of people or ticket sold) to the venues owner or to the promoter of the event, it’s pretty hard to get a gig and get the opportunity to play in front of a lot of people, maybe sharing the stage with some “bigger names”.
Sometimes we have been asked to sell a given number of tickets before the event… You can understand it is an absurdity.
Then there is the problem of selling CDs: Some years ago things seemed a little better than now, the possibility to sell CDs is strictly related to our live activity, there more you play the more chances you have people listen to your stuff and buy your merch.
One more thing, the actual financial crisis definitely doesn’t help this really hard scenario, so we are driven and guided by our passion and live for music!
Concluding, thinking about how things are going on in the music industry (not only in the underground scene), we see the great importance of a great promotion and digital distribution, but from our perspective there is nothing more satisfying than holding your work right in your hands, wether it is a demo, an EP or a full length album.
Is it easier to go along with organizing shows etc. in Florence? It’s not so far from Pistoia, is it?
Yeah, you’re right: Pistoia and Florence are pretty close, 40km. But trust us, they are really different when you consider events and concerts. It’s related to some differences between the two cities, first of all the population of Pistoia is much smaller than the florentine (something like 150k vs 500k).
That’s why there are more venues (great venues) in Florence than in Pistoia, where you can find just a couple of really good ones.
Then, the underground scene in Florence is really active and a lot of bands during their tour are likely to play there (especially “big name bands”).
Anyway we don’t consider ourselves unlucky, because there are cities, and even regions, in Italy where an underground metal scene is completely absent.
Sightseing-wise, would you recommend visiting your are this Summer? I’m in the middle of planning my car-trip right after Fluff Fest, so I’m really open for any suggestions. I’m looking for rocks-free Corfu-alike sand beaches with beautiful cities and villages on my way there :)
Our country offers a lot of places that are worth a visit.
It really depends on what you are looking for… If, as you said, you like to relax yourself on some quiet beach, you should definitely go in the south of Italy like Calabria, Campania or Puglia. There you can find wonderful and amazing beaches.
If on the other hand you are interested in hanging out and meeting people, without renouncing to go to the sea, you can consider to go to the center east coast or the west one (Riviera Romagnola is the eastern, Versilia is the western).
There you can find bars, pubs and venues to spend the evening after a day under the sun! They are the places chosen by a lot of young Italians.
Everything depends on what you’d like to do. If you’re going to coming here in Italy you should also check out some really fascinating cities like Milan, Turin, Bologna, Florence or Rome. So, here we have got great place to visit, you have only to choose.
Thanks!
Ok, back to the band, you mentioned that you’re already working on your new material. Why so fast? It’s been only 9 months since your last release! ;)
Also, what can we expect for the new record?
There are a lot of reasons that have made us choosing to start working on a new album so fast.
First of all, we have changed our line-up and we changed the way we think about our music. In facts, while our guitarist and drummer have been playing together for a long time, on the other hand I (Alessio, vocals) and the bassist (Mattia) have joined the band quite recently, during the first months of 2012. As you can imagine, a lot of songs of Subjects have been written before we entered the band and we couldn’t give to the project the right contribute to feel that work as ours. We just accepted what had been already written (at least as drafts) and added some a little bit of our personality, but this is distant from what we really want now and what we want to do.
So we decided to start an entire new work from scratch, more modern and full of what we think represents as right now as a band.
We have met a lot of people and got a lot of opportunities recently, that have put us in the right mood to enter the studio again to work together.
We really think that our new songs are something new, without losing any of the typical shades of BLEED SOMEONE DRY. So we are using Subject as a start to build on it and on the MathCore something new!
From this upcoming work we will expect much more feedback, than from Subject. We really think we will have the chance to let more people know us and our music!
Any plans to release another video this year? :)
We will definitely work on a new videoclip as soon as we will choose the first single for our upcoming album. Right now we’re finishing writing all the songs, so it’s a bit too early to talk about our next videoclip (anyway, we’ve already got some cool ideas).
How do you plan to overcome distributional issues? Will you be putting out your new music via Kreative Klan?
Beside the fact that we really enjoyed working with the guys from Kreative Klan and that we won’t preclude any further collaboration, as all the bans like us, we would like to work with a bigger label – we don’t expect it to be Century Media but definitely one bigger and with more visibility outside Italy.
Nice. Let me know as soon as something surfaces!
What were some of the reasons why you broke up with UK Division?
Our collaboration with UK Division terminated without any problems. It happens when BLEED SOMEONE DRY started to have some line-up problems, we changed a lot of members, and at the end we decided, in agreement with the label, to end the collaborations and to work together again maybe in the future – when the band would have solved its problems.
In the meantime, UK Division closed, so our choice was long-sighted :D
Oh, I see :)
Ok, so tell me a bit about the shows you’ve played recently.
During 2012, BLEED SOMEONE DRY have come back on stage and we have played a lot of gigs in venues in central Italy and in Tuscany. We had the honour to play with some real cool bands like THE SECRET. We also needed all this gigs to get back the affinity (that we missed a bit) between us.
And what gigs have you got coming up?
Talking about the future. Before entering the recording session for our new album and locking ourselves inside the studio, thanks to Nazgul Agency (our booking agency), we are planning a tour in UK and Central Europe. We’ve got a lot of proposals to play in Eastern Europe and some buy-on to play with really big bands, but right now we decided to be focused on our songwriting. We hope to announce some really cool news, in the immediate future.
Alright gentlemen. Anything else you’d like to share with us?
We will let you listen to our new songs as soon as possible and we will like to tell you our thoughts and ideas, everything that is leading us to make great things and great songs. It will be really amazing.
Thanks so much for your time! Cheers!
Thank you so much, and thanks to your great patience and dedication you put in your work following this musical scene. We hope to talk with you again soon. Bye!
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