The Bleeders

After listening to their record, I have come to the conclusion that the The Bleeders are one hard rocking outfit. Hailing from New Zealand, they are just about ready to hit our shores to shock us into submission and they've just released a new album entitled 'As Sweet As Sin'. I had the chance to have a chat with the band's vocalist Angelo Munro and strangely enough, I couldn't really pick up on his accent although I'm sure it was probably there. With a population of four million, according to Munro, things must work differently for bands over in New Zealand.

"Yeah, it's not like Australia. Over here you can do a full-blown tour and go to every little nook and cranny in the country and then you've got to wait ages before you go out on the road again. There's only so much you can do. That's why we're coming to Australia, there's so much more opportunity to play heaps of shows."

The Bleeders are doing what I suppose one would term a reciprocal tour with Aussie faves Gyroscope, having already finished the New Zealand leg together, I ask Munro how they got along on the road.

"All of the guys in Gyroscope are great, we had an awesome time on the road with them and they went down really well. A hell of a lot of fun," he replies with enthusiasm.

Seeing as New Zealand is so small in relation to Australia, I wanted to know how The Bleeders survive with such a limited audience base to play to.

"We cross genres a lot, I mean we can play with rock bands, we can play with punk bands, we can pretty much play with whoever we want. That's a real advantage for us, it would be a lot harder if we were pigeonholed into one specific style, then the amount of shows we could play would be so much smaller."

For 'As Sweet As Sin', The Bleeders traveled all the way to America to record. They recorded with a producer named Sal Villenueva who I had not previously come across, but apparently has a lot of cred. Munro fills me in on the details.

"Well, we all had a list of producers that we would have liked to have worked with and he was one of them. He heard our stuff and liked it and it all happened from there. He's recorded albums for bands like Thursday and Taking Back Sunday, so it was really great to work with him."

Being in America, I enquire whether they had a chance to play any shows to American audiences.

"Sadly no," answers Munro. "We were over there for two months and it was so hectic. A lot of the guys were missing home and things like that so we just concentrated on recording the album."

Going to America to record, and recording with a famous producer is like the pinnacle of the rock and roll dream for most bands. But in reality, does it make a difference to the actual end result? Because you can tell people how and where and with whom you recorded your album a million times, but if they don't like it, they don't like it. As I always say, you can't polish shit.

"Well 'As Sweet As Sin' has already gone gold over here which was a real shock to us, we never expected that. The difference is really noticeable, the shows are much bigger, we've got kids singing the words to songs it's unreal," Munro tells me with pride in his voice. That certainly put me back in my place.

On record, The Bleeders sound really full on, really hard-rocking and in your face. Munro tells me a bit about their live show and how it compares.

"We want the crowd to have a great time when we play but we still want it to sound good. One thing that there's definitely none of is the guitars swinging around the neck [thank god], we're just not into that. We want to rock out but we still want to hit the right notes. We just can't wait to get over there and get the ball rolling."

Sam Vinall

The Bleeders play at the Adelaide Uni Bar on Sat 22 and Sun 23 July.