By Anna Sorokina, A&E Editor
After releasing its fifth record “Venom” in August 2015, the Welsh metal band Bullet for My Valentine is slated to present the album at the House of Blues Boston on March 3.
The album combines instrumental and vocal ferocity, achieving the band’s goal of staying true to its heavy metal roots. Bullet for My Valentine is composed of vocalist and guitarist Matt Tuck, guitarist Padge Paget, drummer Moose Thomas and the newest addition to the band bassist Jamie Mathias.
After touring in Australia in January and in the US in February, Bullet for My Valentine will spend the rest of the year performing in 14 other countries, including Canada, Japan, Germany, France and Italy.
Before Bullet for My Valentine brings Bostonian metal heads together on Thursday night, The News spoke to Tuck about “Venom,” the band’s world tour and their plans for the future.
The Huntington News: In an interview with Overdrive (an Irish-based daily Internet publication), you said you wanted to write dark lyrics for your album “Venom,” because the music you were writing at the time was “heavy and aggressive.” What influenced you to write music like this as well as address “dark subject matter”?
Matt Tuck: Just stuff that affected me as I was growing up. My life now compared to what it was like growing up in school is black and white, you know, very different. I was bullied a lot because I was kind of a weird-looking kid with long hair, skinny, into heavy metal music, so I was a target for bullies. I was trying to make something of myself with music and my teachers weren’t supportive. They would tell me to drop it and do something else. As bad as it was at that time, I used this as a weapon to motivate myself to keep on going.
HN: What’s the difference between the last two albums in terms of the amount of time spent writing and recording them?
MT: They are very different albums. [With] the last album, we didn’t do any prewriting because we just literally went to the studio, wrote and recorded songs as we went along. It was a great experience, exciting, spontaneous, but slightly dangerous because we didn’t have a chance to live with the songs. We didn’t have the chance to rewrite stuff. This time, we spent a lot of time demoing, a lot of time rewriting[…] We made sure that [the album] was the way we wanted it to be.
HN: On Venom’s album cover, you have a snake and a V that represents three things at once: The number five (for the fifth album), the title Venom and V for Valentine. Could you tell me more about the process of choosing the artwork for the album cover? Who usually comes up with the design and how is this decided among you and the other band members?
MT: The concept usually comes from the band but this time it came from myself. Right before we started making the album, we started using #bfmv5 (Bullet for my Valentine 5), and that kind of stuck in our heads: To use V as a five, V for Valentine, V for Venom and a snake around it.
HN: Is there a country where you would like to go on your next tour where you’ve never toured before?
MT: Yeah, India is a place we would like to go because culturally it’s so different… Just the experience of being in India is kind of a profound thing. We haven’t been in the Middle East so maybe Dubai, Abu Dhabi or something like that.
HN: What are your plans after the tour?
MT: More of the same really, you know: Just get back into the studio, start writing… And keep going.
Photo courtesy Kristina Servant, Creative Commons
