The Bleeders resuscitate NZ rock with a punk pulse

The Bleeders at Spookers hounted house at the former Kingseat Hospital. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Where's the vampire tonight?" asks Angelo Munro, "Is he sick?" The girl with blood dripping from her mouth is unimpressed by the Bleeders' frontman's question. She just works here.

We're at Spookers, a "haunted" house on the grounds of spooky old Kingseat Hospital in Karaka, South Auckland. Munro has been here three times and he's not going to let this zombie girl intimidate him.

Even if she is holding a dagger, not unlike the knife-wielding femme fatale on the cover of the Bleeders' debut album, As Sweet As Sin.

It's obvious the Bleeders don't mind a bit of blood, although, for a bunch of tough-looking blokes, a couple of them with impressive tattoos, who play "hardcore-punk-rock'n'roll", they walk around Spookers rather tentatively at first.

The place is realistic. We enter a wire cage and break into a fast walk as a crazed psycho lurches above us raking a metal bar over the mesh. Disembowelled bodies lie prone on dentist chairs, skulls are speared on wooden stakes, and we even see a Freddy Kruger lookalike.

"I love the way Freddy eyes me up," smirks Munro.

He's already had one of the crazies lean on his shoulder and whisper, "Hey Angelo, I'm going to have fun with you tonight". Then out of the darkness a depraved voice shrieks, "I love the taste of tattoos".

In the next room a mad woman charges round blindly with a meat cleaver mumbling, "Bleeders. Bleeders. I'm going to make you bleed." It seems word has spread quickly among the living dead and demented about tonight's guest stars.

Outside the house they enter the freaky forest and, despite being fondled by mummified zombies and chased out the other side by a chainsaw-wielding masochist, they get out alive.

If that was the nightmare, then in reality the Bleeders are on a dream run. They've been a band on the verge since releasing 2003's A Bleeding Heart EP. While earning a reputation as a must-see live act, the buzz around them has continued to grow (Munro first appeared on the cover of TimeOut in November 2004).

Now, with the backing of major record label Universal and CRS Management (home to Bic Runga and Scribe), they are tipped to be New Zealand rock's next big things.

The fans have spoken too. Recently, courtesy of singles like Out Of Time and The Kill, the band has attracted mainstream attention while still staying loyal to the hardcore and punk crowd. Early demand for As Sweet As Sin is healthy - Universal has sold 7000 copies to retail before its release on Monday.

So it's no wonder Munro and drummer Matt "George" Clark are in the comfy lounge at Universal helping themselves to coffee and Cokes. They've earned it.

Munro has just come from his day job - "the band is the priority, but if you can do a bit of work, then it helps" - and sitting on the couch, fidgeting, you can tell he's a little excited. Caffeine tends to do that to him, he says later.

It's a week after Spookers and tonight the pair, with fellow band members - bass player Gareth Stack, and guitarists Ian King and Hadleigh Donald - are off to see veteran punk rockers the Misfits at the Kings Arms. The Bleeders supported them in Britain last year and they remain one of the band's heroes.

With musical mentors like this it's no wonder they will never relinquish the punk and hardcore roots that were highlighted on the A Bleeding Heart EP. However, while As Sweet As Sin is just as brazen and raucous, it is also more polished than that debut mini recording.

But, warns Munro: "People might have heard our latest singles and thought we were completely melodic. But there are songs on there which could be off the EP. Anyone who thought we don't have that element to us any more is totally mistaken."

A Bleeding Heart is one old track that made the album.

The band re-recorded it because, according to Munro, "it's just a great song and it never really got justice the first time around".

Clark: "It's a good, complete album. You've got the fast songs, you've got the more open ones, and different types of feels to everything. But it's an album you listen to from start to finish. It feels like an entire work and it feels like a story when I listen to it."

It's an album of many moods, too. It is rebellious (the raging S.O.S. and Bridges Burning), aggressive (It's Black, and the anthem, Silhouettes), and surprisingly romantic ("The world is ours tonight," serenades Munro on Night Sky).

And at times, it is also sad and sensitive. "I can't help but wonder why, these tears are falling from the sky, I know, I'll see your face again," he sings on Out Of Time, a song about good friends of the band who died in a car crash last year.

"I think people who listen to the Bleeders know that we're an honest band. We never fake about anything we do. There are songs that are angry and there's romantic songs on it.

"I mean, I've been in a relationship for years and I'm not going to write lyrics about having sex with 10 girls a week when that's not what I do. And you'll never hear a Bleeders song crying about how I've 10 missed calls from my girl. That's crap."

The album was recorded at Big Blue Meenie studios in New Jersey during July and August last year with New York producer Sal Villanueva, who has worked with melodic hardcore bands like Thursday and Taking Back Sunday.

While most of their time was spent working - with 12-hour days (from 1pm to 1am) the norm - they spent a lot of time in the studio's basement playing pool and Nintendo, and watching cable TV. Or they'd take a train to Manhattan for a "$50 day", says Munro.

"Because we didn't have much money to spend," admits Clark. "We were living in this full-on Hispanic neighbourhood and all the signs for the shops were in Spanish, hardly anything in English. There's guys trying to sell you coke and stuff. We saw some interesting stuff," he laughs.

"It was a pretty raw neighbourhood and the rawness on the album suits the part of Jersey that we were recording it in," says Clark.

Don't think the Bleeders have got big-headed and about to turn American on us, though. Munro clears that up: "New York is a dark kind of place. It's quite moody, and that does add to the record. [But] the majority of us coming from west Auckland creates the kind of band we are. We all like ballsy music. I mean, we're into soft stuff as well, but as a band we just like to play ballsy, rowdy music. That's what we're about."

"We [expletive] lean into it," grins Clark.

Before going to the US they worked full-time for six weeks getting new material together and it was during this period that most of the album's songs were written.

"That whole process made us feel like more of a real band," says Clark. "We've all become better at working as a group of five guys doing something together and making it tight, which can only come from the amount of playing, writing stuff and being together as much as we have been."

Compare that to just over three years ago when the Bleeders formed after stints in local hardcore punk bands, including Evil Priest and DSM. Back then they would practise once every two weeks if they were lucky.

"We played more shows in our first year [as the Bleeders] than any of us played in our previous bands in our whole career. So that's going to improve your playing and your musicianship," says Munro.

"I've seen Ange become a much better singer. Not saying he was bad before, but I've watched him progress, you know what I mean," says Clark affectionately.

He's right. Munro's voice is stronger and more varied while still maintaining that death-rattle delivery he's known for.

"One thing people probably don't realise is that in the old stuff, I just yelled the whole time. That wasn't because I couldn't sing, that's just what I wanted to do," he says.

But he couldn't sustain that yell, decided to start singing properly and had some training.

"As a singer you want to have a range. That's why I chose not to yell the whole time, because that's boring. I can take it in different places and that's way better than being a one-dimensional singer. And if the guys in the band are going to up their songwriting then I've got to step up to the plate as well."

And As Sweet As Sin is the proof.

 

Who: The Bleeders

What: Auckland hardcore-punk-rock'n'rollers.

Line-up: (Left to right) Hadleigh Donald (guitar), Ian King (guitar), Gareth Stack (bass), Angelo Munro (vocals), Matt "George" Clark (drums).

Latest album: As Sweet As Sin, out Monday.

On tour: The Brownzy, Browns Bay, April 7; London Shed, Howick, April 8; The Crave Club, New Plymouth, April 12; The Spa Hotel, Taupo, April 13; Brewers Bar, Mt Maunganui, April 15; Atomic Events Centre, Hastings, April 18; Irish Rover, Gisborne, April 19; The Globe Theatre, Palmerston North, April 20; Sub Nine, Wellington, April 21; The Kings Arms, Auckland April 29; Barbarella Bar, Rotorua, May 4; Meteor Theatre, Hamilton, May 5; The Westend, Auckland, May 6.