Bloodsimple
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Bloodsimple has been hard at work completing its long awaited second full length called Red Harvest. They exploded onto the metal scene in 2005 with hard-hitting sounds, attracting new fans everywhere they played.
Bloodsimple started from the ashes of New York post-metallic hardcore heroes Vision of Disorder, where frontman Tim Williams and guitarist Mike Kennedy began writing new music for a new project. They collaborated with guitarist Nick Rowe and former Medication and Skrew bassist Kyle Sanders to begin writing songs.
They played shows across the Northeast, which caught the attention of Mudvayne frontman Chad Gray. He eventually signed the band to his imprint, Bullygoat/Warner Bros. The band issued their debut, A Cruel World in 2005, with songs like “Straight Hate” and “Blood In Blood Out” becoming crowd favorites.
Red Harvest takes over where the debut left off. The music still has a lot of the heaviness they had, but the musical maturity settling into their sound. Williams talked about the making Red Harvest, battling drummer problems, and surviving the rigors of the road.
Blistering.com: It’s been a while since we last heard from Bloodsimple.
Tim Williams: We needed to take some time off, go home, chill out, and record the record locally. It was good and bad. Plus we wanted to take our time. We knew it was an important record so we wanted to make it right. We stretched it out a little bit.
Blistering.com: In between that time, you were doing Vision of Disorder as well. Is this something that will be full time as well?
TW: VOD’s a once in a while thing. I would maybe do a new VOD record, but I don’t think it will ever happen. That’s done. We’re all still good friends and when we want to do a couple of shows, we’d do it. It’s just fun.
Blistering.com: Who decided to do the concept for Red Harvestwith the book?
TW: A lot of people have been asking me about this. I think it’s sort of a miscommunication. It’s not entirely a concept record. That it is not. But what we did is Mike Kennedy, the guitar player, was Googling around, as he always does, one day, and he stumbled across this really cool definition of bloodsimple that came from the novel Red Harvest. The definition we thought summed up bloodsimple in a really cool way represented the chaos and the music. Then all of a sudden, we had this song called “Red Harvest,” it wasn’t called “Red Harvest” at the time. It needed a chorus. We knew it kicked ass and it was missing something. All of a sudden, within a day, it just tied itself all in perfectly. We decided to title the record Red Harvest. We decided to use that bloodsimple definition as a promo thing. Also use the first heavy track on the record, title it Red Harvest, and from the definition, we got the chorus “killing begets more killing” and all that shit. That’s where the concept ends. It’s all ties into that. It did make the record way more interesting. We’re all excited that it’s all tied in. The novel is pretty good. A couple of us read it and it’s pretty cool.
Blistering.com: So the record doesn’t get any more conceptual than that.
TW: The only thing it has is the “killing begets more killing.” That’s the only thing that comes out of the book. Everybody thinks it’s a whole concept record. Nah! It’s not.
Blistering.com: You read a bit of it, and…
TW:I read the whole thing, but half the record was done by then. ¾ of the record was done, and it just so happened in a couple of days in the studios, it came to light and it fit perfectly.
Blistering.com: What do you think you did differently musically? It sounds like you’ve tightened the screws without changing a lot of it.
TW: My motto of the record going into it, I wanted to have a more organic sounding style of metal. I don’t even know if you’d want to call us metal because I don’t know if we are. But we wanted a more live organic record. We wanted a different type of heavy. We didn’t want the run-in-the-mill heavy that’s out there. We also didn’t want to rewrite the script. Who the fuck’s gonna do that? You really can’t. We wanted to do something a little left of center, but that still applied to our fanbase that we already created and maybe get a couple of new fans on the way. That was basically the rule of thumb. Also touring with so many big bands on the first record, we knew we had to step it up. To seeing those bands play and hear what they do and realize that’s why they got as far as they did. Their music is just that good. So that was inspiring as well. We were playing with all of these huge bands, so we knew we needed to step it up.
Blistering.com: The last Vision of Disorder CD, From Bliss To Devastation, redefined your sound then. Then the debut Bloodsimple CD again redefined your sound entering a new band. How tough is to keep redefining your sound this many times?
TW: It wasn’t a conscious thing. If you want to stay in the game, you’ve got to reinvent yourself. Just do what you do, but just do better. It was always going to sound like VOD, because of my voice. But using it differently, different musicians, and thinking outside of the box, you kind of reinvent yourself automatically.
Blistering.com: You had drummer changes recently. How much did that play into the writing of the music?TW: It was frustrating but a lot of the music is written by the four of us. The first record was written like that. Chris [Hamilton, ex-drummer] put in his time, but a lot of it was written without him. This record was kind of the same, then we had Will Hunt [of Dark New Day and Evanescence] come in for two weeks. He’s the one who played on the record. We wrote with him for two weeks straight. A lot of good songs came out of that. It just went. It didn’t inhibit us too bad. It’s a pain in the ass not having a drummer. After the experience with Chris, no good or bad…he’s a great guy…we’re not gonna just take anybody. It’s got to be the right person. We don’t want to go through that again. It’s bad for everybody. When that time’s right, the guy we’re with now on tour, Bevan [Davies, Comes With The Fall, The Mercy Clinic], he’s close to making the mark. He’s an awesome guy and fucking wails. Will [Hunt] was great too, but he’s got so much shit going on. It’s hard to keep a finger on him. But Bevan is amazing. He’s real good.
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