If you’ve been a Ryan’s Rock Show reader for a minute, you may remember the interview I did a while back with Death By Stereo. I got into a pretty long discussion with the dudes about the early Orange County punk scene, and how a small community of kids can go on to influence generations of bands. So recently I got to thinking, what was the hardcore scene like in the OC back in the day? The last time I was at Chain Reaction all I saw were kids in those green and purple neon-colored shirts that have 1st grade cartoon drawings of animals with brains gushing out. Is that what hardcore has turned into?
I figured if there is one band to explain hardcore music, especially in the OC, it’s Bleeding Through. The band has rightfully earned its rank as a heavyweight within the hardcore/metal genre, and is one of the scene’s longest standing bands amongst peers such as Every Time I Die, Unearth, and Throwdown.
“You have to start from the bottom to appreciate anything that you’re going to get,” exclaims bassist Ryan Wombacher. “We have been through shit and back. When we got our first bus tour, we were just like ‘fuck this, we’ve earned it’. It was the reward for sleeping in the van in Massachusetts at Metal Fest in the snow freezing where you couldn’t feel your feet.”
I met up with Wombacher and vocalist Brandan Schieppati for a late lunch on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood to discuss the West Coast hardcore scene, its evolution over time, and why hardcore music has become “a fashion.”
Beginning with the early 90s Orange County hardcore scene, here is Ryan Wombacher and Brandan Schieppati of Bleeding Through on Ryan’s Rock Show: