BLEEDING THROUGH To Release New Album Next Year

EspyRock recently conducted an interview with bassist Ryan Wombacher of the Californian metalcore group BLEEDING THROUGH. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

EspyRock: You also mentioned people being more in your pockets now, is this something that you face or since you moved to Rise Records and with Roadrunner [in the U.K.], is it a lot easier now to avoid this situation?

Ryan: Yeah, it is a lot easier with them. I think the whole hands-in-your-pockets thing is now when bands get signed, the younger bands, as they have no choice but to sign a 360 deal where labels have their hands in their pockets even deeper because they take ten or fifteen percent of everything, including what you make on tour. BLEEDING THROUGH will never, and has never, signed a 360 deal and we won't, you can't pull that shit with a band who has been around as long as us. This band has been touring for twelve years, the members in the band, some of them, have been touring for fifteen years so we will never sign to a 360 deal. I think that is the way that it has changed for record labels. They don't make money off the records anymore, or not as much as they used to, so now they have to find ways to make money somewhere else. These bands who are new and want to get signed, if that's the only option for them and they don't know if it's good or bad just kind of get suckered into it. Well they don't get suckered into because it's the only choice they have, it's unfortunate.

EspyRock: For younger bands who do want to get into the industry but maybe skip the downfalls of such a deal, and I suppose for bands even like BLEEDING THROUGH here, do you think the Internet is sort of helping to make it easier and also cheaper for things such as promotion, advertising and also the sales of music?

Ryan: I think that's my favorite question people ask, because it's such a double-edged... it's the sharpest double-edged sword that is out there for music right now. The Internet has done amazing amazing things for advertising, networking and getting your name out there. I mean, all you have to do is sit at your desk, you can be in your pajamas eating a banana and you can post something on the internet and someone around the world in Africa will see it in seconds as opposed to the Nineties. In the Nineties when hardcore was getting started, fanzines, the only way you knew a tour was coming through is if it came in a fanzine. You could show up at that show and you didn't know that the tour got cancelled a month ago but it said in the fanzine that it was booked and if the club didn't send out a notice saying something was cancelled, you wouldn't know. I think on the opposite side of the Internet, I think it has also killed music as opposed to helping it grow because of how simple it is. A lot of people take things for granted and people have things at their fingertips at all times. I think because they take it for granted, that's kind of killed the whole magical side of it, so it's definitely a double-edged sword.

EspyRock: What [are your] future plans in 2011?

Ryan: 2011 is going to have a new record.

EspyRock: So have you already started to push forward with the album?

Ryan: We're going to start writing when we come home. We're going to take a little bit of a break as soon as this tour is over so we can get our families back in order and spend some time with them, then start writing and then start working on the process of building tours. 2011 is going to be very strategic tour-wise, there won't be as many but the ones that are will be bigger, a bit more intense and more thought out. Like, this is who we want on the tour and if they are not going to do the tour, then we just won't fill the spot. If we want five bands to do the tour and only three can do it, then it's going to be a three-band tour. That's what we want to do, it's more strategic.

EspyRock: So if writing is planned when you get home, can we expect an end of 2011 release or maybe earlier?

Ryan: Maybe mid-year; safe to say towards the end but not at the end, maybe like eight months or something like that. Best thing about it is we're going to do it whenever we want to do it. There is no deadline right now, we don't have any dates set, we don't have the studio, we're going to do the record ourselves. So we will literally go in and record it and it will be probably be done before we sign a contract.

EspyRock: So you're not still signed to Rise or Roadrunner for a future release?

Ryan: It is a possibility. We haven't talked about that, but we haven't got that far. We will write the record, finish it, it will be done and then all we need to do is get a postage note and put a due date on it but it will be done. The only thing we will be waiting for is time for the press, time for the release date and time for advertising.

Read the entire interview from EspyRock.