The Bleeding Alarm: It Felt Weird at First

British Columbia’s The Bleeding Alarm may get mashed in with a hundred other bands with similar names, but they aren’t your regular post-hardcore band. For one, they openly admit to listening to Kelly Clarkson, for two one of them has a classical music background, and for three, well… just read the interview. For a band that’s been scooped up and signed relatively fast The Bleeding Alarm’s guitarist, Jens, is holding himself together very well. Over the phone we got the chance to chat with the extremely talented musician about some, well, very unordinary things.

TS: So how has the tour been going?
Jens: Perfect. It’s been going great. Pretty crazy…

TS: Tell me something crazy about the tour?
Jens: haha ok. Well just last week we were in Houston, Texas and we show up to this venue and it’s called Super Happy Fun Land. We were expecting sort of an amusement park, outdoor stage sort of deal. But what it actually is, is this tiny tiny tiny little house. You go in and there’s cats all over the stage!
TS: Cats!?
Jens: Yea! Cats!!
TS: Ahh that is crazy! Haha. What did you do?
Jens: So we’re just kind of standing there and it smells like cat food and everything. We’re just hanging out and there’s all these people with long beards and long hair hanging around. Seedy looking people and they’re just kind of staring at us. So we go into the backyard and there’s these trees with skulls nailed to the tress with dolls with their eyes gouged out. All these trees with knives sticking out of the tress and fake arms coming out of the ground.

TS: Wow! That’s fucked up! Was it in a neighborhood?
Jens: Yea kind of it was right by this weird steel mill so we’re just like, “k this is kind of creepy” and then we found out that it’s a commune of, we don’t know what. But all these people live in this one little house. We didn’t quite know what to think of it. We got really creeped out. So then a couple of our guys started having a really bad allergic reaction to he cats and we had to leave. We couldn’t play.

TS: Oh no! Did the other bands play with the cats?
Jens: Yea they did. We wanted to…

TS: What were they doing with all those cats?
Jens: They were just chillin' on the stage! It was so funny. We move around a lot when we play, what are we going to do with these cats? We don’t want cats scratching up our face when we’re trying to play guitar. It was really funny!

TS: That’s so funny! I’ve never heard anything like it! So how’s it been out in the States? Are they making you feel welcome?
Jens: Oh we’re loving it. Half of our band is from the states so they have the relatives down here and what not. It’s weird going from Canada, where more people know who we are, and down here we’re just the openers. It’s fun though. A new experience.

TS: So in your genre, there’s lots of band vying for attention how do you stick out? What makes you different?
Jens: I don’t really know. We put on a really intense live show. Each one of us really seems to get in this music zone. You get on the stage and you just feel it. The performance comes out pretty intense. I think we’re trying a few different things musically, mixing heavy music with some more ambient stuff.

TS: Cool. So how did you get into music when you were younger?
Jens: I was actually a classical musician when I was younger in my early teens to early twenties.

TS: No way! That’s sweet. What did you play?
Jens: I was a classical trumpet player and toured around with orchestras and then I went to university for classical composition. I ended up stopping to start this band and then things moved on from there.

TS: How’d you break out of the classical ways?
Jens: It just kind of happened one day. Honestly, it was from this dream. I had this weird dream that I was on stage playing guitar and singing. I hated rock music before that! So I woke up that day and I went downstairs and I was like, “Mom I think I’m supposed to start a band” and she’s like, “what!?” Here I was this classical musician, and I didn’t know why but I really felt like I was supposed to do it so I went out bought a guitar and started up a band the next day. Right after that I started this band and things happened so quickly. We got signed so quickly and the album came out.

TS: That’s awesome. So how have you been dealing with it all moving so fast?
Jens: It’s been tough. We’ve had a few lineup changes. It went really fast. So the pressure was on, through industry and the line up changes were because people couldn’t handle the stress or they didn’t like being on the road that much. It’s been tough, I stuck through everything and we have a great group of guys together now.

TS: Did your previous experience touring with classical orchestras prepare you
Jens: Yea and I also toured as a singer and guitar player in an R&B funk group. We toured all over the world, in Europe and everywhere else. It was really cool.

TS: Wow that’s impressive! You have a really vast background. What have you been listening to lately?
Jens: I’ve been listening to Elbow’s Cast of Thousands. Radiohead’s Kid A and Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway! hahaha
TS: Haha for real?
Jens: Yea actually we play it a lot! It’s got some really good songs. It kind of felt weird at first, I can’t remember who put it on in the van, but then we all ended up really liking it. There’s bunch of rock and we sing it at the top of our lungs!

TS: That’s great. So what’s next for The Bleeding Alarm?
Jens: Right now we’re just really focusing on this album and promoting it. Hopefully it will catch on down here. From there, I would love to start recording the new album by the end of the summer.

TS: Have you already began writing?
Jens: Yea, I’ve been writing so much. The album that is just getting re-released we wrote like 3 years ago! So the new stuff is long overdue. It’s going to be more intense on all levels. More melodic, harder, just really intense. 

- Sari Delmar












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