“I’m not joking, it single-handedly started Bleed From Within”: Scott Kennedy on the album that changed his life

In 2003, The Black Dahlia Murder roared out of Michigan with a debut album, Unhallowed, that set them up as one of the most important American metal bands of their time. As contemporaries like Lamb Of God and Killswitch Engage also took off, there remained something more gritty and subterranean about Trevor Strnad's troops of doom. Unhallowed was an album that propelled them upward, while keeping its feet and ears firmly in the underground, not least because of their metal maniac singer's obsession with finding heaviness off the beaten track.

Thousands of miles away in Glasgow, a young Scott Kennedy discovered the album as soon as it was released. When it came to start his own outfit, the framework was already set. Here, the Bleed From Within frontman looks back at the impact TBDM and their late, much-missed vocalist had on his band and his life…

“If it wasn’t for Unhallowed I would not have started Bleed From Within. It’s not my favourite metal album in the world – it’s not even my favourite Black Dahlia Murder album – but it’s one that when I think about it, it definitely changed the course of my life. I remember when I heard it, I became obsessed with Trevor Strnad. I wanted to be him. I wanted to sound like him. And if you listen to our first two albums, I am literally emulating that guy’s voice.

“I bought that album only a few days after it came out, and it blew me away. At the time, I thought it was two vocalists they had, because Trevor was doing the high screams and the low stuff. I was like, ‘That’s two vocalists. How’s he doing that?’

“I’m not even joking when I say that was single-handedly the album that started Bleed From Within. There’s been influences all across the board, like Pantera, Lamb of God, Metallica and Slayer that have kind of influenced our sound, but it was them that really made us want to do something. There was more of a death metal influence, and it all started because of Unhallowed.

“They played in Glasgow, and we were lucky enough that the local promoter at the time put us on as openers, and we became friends with Trevor. He had our back since then. When they released their third album, Nocturnal, they thanked us in the booklet, and in the next three albums after that. Every time they came back to Glasgow, they requested that we would be on the show, and we just became friends. And it was a beautiful thing.

“That band mean the absolute world to me, and I’m so, so sad that Trevor is no longer with us. I would give anything for that guy to still be here. He was a great dude. He was so underground and enthusiastic about everything. He’d always be going, ‘Have you heard this thing that I found on Bandcamp?’ I can’t think of another guy in any band that was that championed young bands more than him, and he was a total, total sweetheart. The thing it makes me really sad is that I don’t even think he knew how influential he was. He genuinely meant the fucking world to me. And I’m sure there’s so many people – in bands and as fans – who worship that guy, and I don’t even think he knew how important he was. But certainly, he was to me.”

Bleed From Within’s album Zenith is out now via Nuclear Blast. The band are on tour in Europe, hitting the UK on October 10.

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