Scottish rockers BLEED FROM WITHIN headline Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff on April 17. ANDY HOWELLS chats with guitarist CRAIG GOWANS

How did you all come together as a band?

Wemet at a youth club in the town we’re from. A few of us went to school together too so we’ve always been good friends.Weused to go to the music night at the youth club every Tuesday night and jam Lamb of God songs. We decided to start a band and start writing our own songs.Wenever meant for it to go anywhere at the time, we’ve always done it because we love it and that’s still true today.

Can you tell us a bit about your new album Uprising and what inspired it?

Uprising is about the struggle the band went through over the last couple of years trying to get this albumwritten and released, and about how we overcame everything and came out on top.

We had a lot of problems surrounding us after Empire came out, we weren’t sure if we were even going to be able to release a third album Luckily everything worked out and through sheer determination and help frompeople like Century Media Records, our management Raw Power, and of course our fans, we managed to get to where we are nowand we’re stronger than ever.

Lyrically, it is a very angry album at times, but overall it has a message of positivity, about howgood things can come froma bad situation.

Are you looking forward to going out on tour with your new songs?

The songs were always written with the live showin mind – writing specific parts because we knew they’d be killer live. We’ll be playing these songs for who knows howmany years to come so we need to make sure they work in a live environment.

So yes, we can’t wait to get out and play these songs to people.

What can fans expect from your gigs?

Welike to get the crowd involved, they are of course the whole reason we’re there. We’ll always throw in some older songs to keep everyone happy but we’re itching to try out some of the newsongs live too.

What have you got planned after the tour?

After the Testament tour in Europe, we have a headline tour of the UK, with Heart of a Coward and Silent Screams supporting. This is our first headline tour in the UK for four years now, so it’s a really important one for us, our UK audience was our first audience, so they’re like our first love!

The album will be out by then so hopefully we can play a lot of new songs for everyone. After that, it’s summer festivals, then hopefully touring as much as possible all over the world.

● Bleed From Within will appear at Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff on April 17, visit clwb.net for ticket information