Bleed From Within

Lamb of God covers in a Glasgow youth club

Bleed From Within came together in Glasgow in 2005, in a youth club where the members worked their way through Lamb of God covers. In October 2026 they are crossing Australia as special guests to Lamb of God, which is the sort of symmetry that takes twenty-one years and seven albums to arrange.

The first two records were deathcore made on no money: Humanity in July 2009 and Empire in May 2010, both on Rising Records, both since pulled from streaming services. The break came sideways, through a replacement slot at Graspop in Belgium in 2011 that was good enough to get them signed to Century Media in August 2012. Uprising followed on 25 March 2013, produced in halves by Romesh Dodangoda, who handled drums and vocals, and Adam Getgood, who handled guitars and bass, with Logan Mader mixing. It reached number 13 on the UK Rock Chart. That June the band supported Megadeth in the UK and took Metal Hammer's Best New Band award.

The decade in the middle

What followed was not a rise. The crowdfunded four-track EP Death Walk arrived in 2014, and then came years on a circuit that did not get much bigger. The change that mattered was internal: in 2017 Steven Jones replaced Martyn Evans on rhythm guitar, bringing clean vocals into a band that had not really had them. Era, released on 6 April 2018 and trailed by the single Alive on 19 January that year, is the record where the melodic death metal and groove metal halves of the sound stop being decoration and start carrying songs.

The End of All We Know arrived as a standalone single in November 2019 and has stayed in the live set ever since. Fracture followed on 29 May 2020, with a guest solo from Trivium's Matt Heafy, and landed in a year that had no shows in it. The band signed to Nuclear Blast on 12 November 2021 and released Shrine on 3 June 2022. The line-up that made all of it since Era — Scott Kennedy on vocals, Craig Gowans on lead guitar, Jones on rhythm guitar and cleans, Davie Provan on bass and Ali Richardson on drums — has now held together for nine years.

Zenith, and what it did to the numbers

The seventh album came out on 4 April 2025 on Nuclear Blast, recorded across 2024 and trailed by four singles over ten months: Hands of Sin in June 2024, In Place of Your Halo in December 2024, A Hope in Hell in January 2025 and God Complex in March 2025. Brann Dailor of Mastodon and Josh Middleton of Sylosis both guest on it.

It charted at four on the UK Rock & Metal Albums chart and nine in Scotland, with placings of 47 in Switzerland, 68 in Germany and 185 in Belgium. Distorted Sound gave it nine out of ten and Metal Hammer four out of five; Blabbermouth scored it 85 and MetalSucks 80 out of 100, and the aggregate at Album of the Year stands at 83 from five critics. The Moshville Times called it the highest point of the band's career and described the sound as crushing and angry, loud and abrasive, yet technical and inventive also.

It is also the record on which the band stop delivering heaviness the same way twice. In Place of Your Halo has a bagpipe breakdown in it. A Hope in Hell leans on Jones's clean vocals rather than Kennedy's roar. Edge of Infinity closes the album on piano and acoustic guitar. Those detours are what most of the reviews fixed on, and they are the reason the album travelled further than Shrine did.

Where they stand in October 2026

Touring behind Zenith has been close to continuous. September and October 2025 took in Europe with After the Burial and Great American Ghost, followed by a US run opening for Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine that included The Rooftop at Pier 17 in New York. Richardson, who coordinates the band's touring, called playing America's biggest city one of the first things on a band's bucket list; their previous New York show had been in April 2023, supporting August Burns Red at Palladium Times Square.

Then 2026 went like this. An intimate UK and Ireland headline run in March, billed as The Dying Sun Tour, with a second Edinburgh night and an Aberdeen date added after the first sold out. The band's first North American headline tour, 27 dates from Worcester, Massachusetts on 2 April to New York on 7 May, with Sylosis, Great American Ghost and Life Cycles beneath them. A European festival summer that took in Bloodstock Open Air on 8 August, Rock the Lakes in Switzerland on 14 August, Dynamo Metal Fest in Eindhoven on 15 August and V and B Fest in France on 20 August.

Right now they are in Australia as special guests on the Lamb of God and Trivium co-headline tour, announced on 12 May 2026: Perth on 2 October, the Adelaide Entertainment Centre theatre on 4 October, John Cain Arena in Melbourne on 6 October, the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on 9 October and Riverstage in Brisbane on 11 October, with their own headline sideshow at the Oxford Art Factory in Sydney on 7 October.

The next step is the largest in the band's history. Five Finger Death Punch announced their 20th-anniversary European arena tour on 5 May 2026, with tickets on general sale from 8 May: 21 cities from Manchester on 16 January 2027 to Helsinki on 22 February, Lamb of God as special guest and Bleed From Within opening. Their confirmed dates on that run include the OVO Hydro in Glasgow on 17 January, The O2 in London on 23 January, the Atlas Arena in Łódź on 29 January, the O2 arena in Prague on 31 January and the Royal Arena in Copenhagen on 17 February. Ten months will separate a 700-capacity Edinburgh basement from a hometown arena.

Seventy-five minutes, no barrier

The Liquid Room in Edinburgh on 1 March 2026 is the clearest recent picture of a headline show. Doors at six, on stage at 8.45, off at ten: 75 minutes, 14 songs, in a 700-capacity basement with black walls and exposed pipes, the first of two sold-out nights in the city. Reviewing it for Ever Metal, Jon Deaux noted that there was no gap and no buffer between the stage and the room, and that the band played into the crowd rather than at it.

The set opened on Zenith and closed on In Place of Your Halo, with The End of All We Know, Pathfinder, Alive and Violent Nature arriving early and six Zenith tracks spread across the night. The Dying Sun run was deliberately built on a different setlist from the festival and support sets, and the deep cuts proved it: Invisible Enemy and A Depth That No One Dares both got their live debuts, and Leech was played for the first time since 2014. A vocalist from Baest, on the bill for the tour, guested on God Complex. After A Hope in Hell, Kennedy stopped to run a gender reveal for two people in the crowd, Sara and Steve, which the band had not done before.

Support slots are a different proposition. At John Cain Arena on 6 October the band's window ran from 6.40 to 7.25pm, 45 minutes to make an arena bill that is not theirs pay attention, and the same compression will apply across the Five Finger Death Punch dates in January. Setlist.fm's running average across all their shows sits at one hour and 14 minutes. Audience notes from the North American headline run tend to credit the whole package rather than the headliner alone, with ticket-site reviews from the Baltimore show saying every band on the bill crushed it.