The Bled

Hey man, how are you this evening? 

Good, how you doing Cam? 

Yeah, really good thanks.

Where are you calling from at the moment? 

Tucson, Arizona.  

You guys home from tour? 

Yeah, we did just get back from

tour but I actually moved down to LA in January, but it’s still home

for the other guys. We’re getting together to practice before we head

off for the “Projekt Revolution” tour. 

What tour did you just finish

up? 

Well, we’ve been on breaks for

the last little but, but we recently did a 2 week stint across Canada

with My Chemical Romance. 

Cool man. I was going to ask

that, ha ha. Those shows with My Chemical Romance would’ve been huge! 

Ha ha, those shows were fucking

awesome dude! For a band like us to be playing arenas was so daunting.

At first we were like, “we can’t do this” but it was great! The

kids are always so cool at shows like that, especially in Canada were

they seem to have such an open mind towards music. It was just great. 

The cool thing with the arena

shows is no matter who you are, as soon as you walk on stage, you’ve

got 5 to 10,000 kids screaming at you, like, YEE HAWWW, ha ha.

Ha ha, and the Projekt Revolution

– that’s a pretty huge tour to be a part of man. 

Yeah man, it’s going to be a

really fun tour. You’ve got Linkin Park who are just huge, Taking

Back Sunday and our good friends in Saosin. It’s basically just going

to be a big hang out fest! 

It feels good to know that we’re

the heaviest band on the tour which rules! Ha ha. 

How did you guys end up on

a tour which includes groups like Linkin Park, HIM and Placebo? 

Ha ha, it is a bit weird. Well,

what I’ve been told – and I’m not sure if this is true or someone’s

just blowing smoke up my arse – is that the Linkin Park dudes hand

pick who they went on the tour, which is pretty cool. 

It definitely seems like the

tour has branched out a lot since the days of Korn headlining, ha ha. 

Ha ha ha, completely! Rap metal

might’ve died, who knows?! Ha ha. 

Have you guys toured with any

side shows with Saosin which would be pretty cool. 

Well, we’ve toured with My Chemical

Romance 4 or 5 times now. We did the Warped Tour with Taking Back Sunday

too. 

I don’t really know much about

Medina Lake but they should be cool. I don’t really know much about

the other bands on our stage except for Saosin who we’ve played with

heaps and they’re good friends of ours.  

Saosin are just great though,

they’re doing so well in the US at the moment and they just put on

a great show every night. 

Which bands are you looking

forward to checking out each night? 

Gosh, you know, I’m just looking

forward to see Saosin as much as possible. They’re awesome musicians

–especially their drummer Alex – he’s just so good and on point.

Since “Louder Now” came out I’m really liking Taking Back Sunday

so I’m looking forward to hearing those songs live. 

For sentimental reasons I can’t

wait to watch My Chemical Romance. You know, we toured with them before

they were huge – we actually did their UK tour which was just before

they blew up and became the next big thing – so getting to see them

kill it every night will be great! 

Even seeing Linkin Park will be

cool. Their music isn’t something I’m really into but I hear they

put on a great show. 

But the great thing about My Chemical

Romance is that they’re still the same guys before they got huge.

They just put everything into each show man. 

“Found In The Flood” has

“Silent Treatment”? 

Certainly has man. The record

will be coming out on September 25^th through Vagrant which

means Australia and New Zealand will be our first tours in support of

that record! 

I know this question gets asked

like this time around? 

I can honestly say that is my

favourite record of ours because there’s just so much energy. All

the way through, from start to finish, it’s just got this really great

energy. 

I mean, there were parts of the

first record that are more pronounced on the new CD, and even parts

of our 2^nd album too. These are always going to sound like

cliché answers, ha ha, but that’s just how it is. 

Ha ha, it’s all good. 

We also had more time to write

this record compared to our other albums. We just had a lot more time

and a lot more focus. The really cool thing was that we actually lived

at the studio where we recorded so we had 24 hour access to the studio

and that was really cool. 

I’ve always wanted to add extra

percussion and some keys and piano stuff, so the extra time let me do

that. 

Did you personally play the

keys and piano parts? 

Yeah man. There are some parts

on the record where you’ll hear some soloing going on, but the keys

and piano are more there to get that eerie sound and get some really

big sounding shit! It just sounds huge man. 

Have you ever felt that being

or dare I say it, catchier songs? 

Ha ha ha, you know what man. Vagrant

has never pushed us to write a certain kind of sound. I mean, no label

is upset if a band writes catchy songs tat will sell, ha ha, they will

never say no. But we’ve never been pushed in that direction. 

On this new record we definitely

experimented a lot more but it was all on our terms. Nobody was saying

do this or do that. We’re definitely leading our own direction. 

Your touring plans for the

your club shows to a stadium with 10,000 thousand people in it? 

The difference between the shows

–for me anyway – is that when kids in clubs go crazy they get on

the stage, you know? They tear shit down and break the lights but with

arenas we have to be crazier than they are! 

We have to play something that

the crowd will feel and then you see 1,000 kids jumping up and down

and give us that energy and then we play harder. It can get hard because

the crowd are further away because of the barricades but there’s still

a huge energy there! 

James (vocals) is definitely really

good at connecting with the kids. I mean, he’s the only one that can

do that at arena shows because he can jump in the fucken crowd and break

his bones on the barricade, ha ha. 

I’m going to sound like a

one of the best sets I’ve ever seen.  

Fuck, thank you man. That’s

awesome! 

Did you ever think a band playing

around the world? 

Oh dude, to think that we’re

playing in front of this many people while we’re playing heavy fucken

music… it’s just crazy!  

I think we owe a lot of our success

to other bands that paved the way. You know, when we started, even playing

in front of 500 people was just insane – we’d get off stage and

be all “I can’t believe we just did that” – but this definitely

isn’t something that we’d expect doing what we do. It’s a dream

and way more than we could ever hope for.

The fact that it’s happening

and we keep getting bigger tours… we’re just so grateful. We had

no idea that this could happen. 

Who are some smaller bands

out? 

Well, I don’t know how unknown

they are now, but I heard them when they were small, but Gallows man.

A lot of people are catching onto them and loving them now.  

It was just really cool to hear

something heavy but different.  

They’re hitting Australia

with you guys on “Taste Of Chaos” yeah? 

Yeah man, I want to play a song

with them on drums! Ha ha 

Which member of The Bled has

the worst habit on the road? 

Ha ha, well, everyone has their

bad habits. A little bit of drinking, too much smoking. Just the usual

stuff. Although, I think this tour might be the first one every that

no one smokes cigarettes in our bands which is an amazing feat! 

Although, that could be a lie

because we’re about to tour for a month so that might change, ha ha.

In the studio, the smoking was just non stop. 

Actually, James has a really bad

habit. He’ll go to sleep in full denim man. His denim jacket, and

jeans and his boots and he’ll just sweat that shit out and then get

up and do it all again and play a show. Ha ha 

Ha ha, that’s it man. Anything

else you’d like to say? 

Nothing that I can think of. We’re

just super excited to be coming back to Australia and playing in New

Zealand. Hopefully we see some of the same faces from the last tour. 

You most definitely will man. 

Awesome. 

Thanks for your time. 

For more information check out: 

http://www.myspace.com/thebled