Bleeding Through Frontman on the Music Industry: ‘Playing Hardcore and Metal Is Not a Career Move’

Bleeding Through is releasing 'The Great Fire,' their seventh studio album, this week, and frontman Brandan Schieppati is fired up! The Southern Californian singer, and gym proprietor, is on the phone with Noisecreep when he opens up about his feelings on the current state of underground music industry. "There's a track on the new album called 'Goodbye to Death' which is about how bands, record labels, and management companies, pat themselves on the back before they even really accomplish anything. When Bleeding Through first starting doing this, you would hear people gloat about stuff like selling 400K albums, or selling out huge venues, but it's do different now. Now you'll hear bands say, "We made it! We sold $700 in merch tonight!" It's a joke," Schieppati tells Noisecreep.

"I think people are too busy celebrating the short term, rather than the long term – and that's disconcerting to me. I've never wanted to be in a band that had a few fantastic years and then went away. We've definitely had years that were better than others. It's never been the kind of thing where we would break up as soon as we stopped drawing 1000 people at our shows. We've always done this to please ourselves, and not as some delusion of grandeur," the vocalist says about Bleeding Through's 13-year career.

Schieppati is also worried that some of the younger bands that Bleeding Through helped influence might have missed the point of it all. "I don't think it's always the kids in these bands' fault. But I hear about bands dropping out of high school because someone told them they had to do that so they can tour full time and become rich. It's scary. This stuff – hardcore, metal, punk – it has a short shelf life. So you're going to throw your education away so someone else can make money off of you? It's just wrong.

"No one is buying records anymore. So these newer bands need to know that there won't be another Metallica. Those level bands are just not going to pop up any more. You have to play this kind of music because you love it. Playing hardcore and metal is not a career move."

'The Great Fire' is being issued by Rise Records, a company known for popular acts like Attack Attack! and Miss May I, but with Bleeding Through not touring as heavily as they did in the past, Noisecreep asked Schieppati if that was causing any friction between the band and its label.

"Rise Records has been great to us. When they signed us back in 2009, they knew we were going to give the first record we did with them [2010's 'Bleeding Through'] a full, 7-8 month tour to support it, and that we wouldn't be doing the same for this new album. They're just happy that we're still putting out new music, and I also feel like they genuinely care about the band. I'm sure you know how rare that is in the music industry."