All it took was two weeks. Sometimes just one take. Such is the spirit of Interrupt, Bleeding Rainbow’s fourth album. Released February 25, 2014 via Kanine Records, the foursome of Sarah Everton, Rob Garcia, Al Creedon, and Ashley Arnwine has stripped bare the layers that came to represent 2013’s Yeah Right. “We wanted to get back to writing more straight forward songs.” Though the band returned to Kyle Johnson to engineer and produce Interrupt with a stack of demos tested during long stretches on tour, the “efficient” Bleeding Rainbow went to Philadelphia’s Fancy Time Studios with brevity and an impending tour forefront in their minds.
With a runtime south of 35 minutes and little use for “effects and extended guitar breakdowns”, the band has taken lessons learned from previous experiments and put them into practice throughout Interrupt. “The whole process [for Yeah Right] was so long and intense that we just wanted to make the follow-up as simple and to-the-point as it could be.” Interrupt is more than just a clever name. The driving melodies and sweet refrain of lead single “So You Know” speaks to isolation and a lack of control. The guttural vocals of Rob pairs with the blistering verses of “Images,” creating mental pictures of Bleeding Rainbow pouring out heart and soul in the whirlwind recording sessions that define the band’s “music-as-therapy” approach.
Notable throughout Interrupt is the pounding drums of Robi Gonzalez (A Place to Bury Strangers). “Every take of every song I would watch both Al and Rob staring at Robi in complete awe. We owe Robi a lot.” The bombastic backbone of Interrupt won’t be left at the doorstep of the album: “We had to get a drummer who could recreate the beats and hit as hard as he can live - so thank god Ashley stepped in because she is incredible. Everywhere we go on tour people are blown away by her.”
As they will be when they first listen to Interrupt. Its impact is immediate and unforgiving, Bleeding Rainbow is able to match their visceral live shows with an album’s worth of dressed down punk-pop as feral and unrelenting as any band hungry for their chance to impress hardnosed fans. Interrupt does it over and over, impeding your other thoughts until you can no longer ignore your impulse. Grab the record, put it on repeat, and never go without it again.
