When Bullet for my Valentine brought the Poisoned Ascendancy Tour to LA with Trivium, we went out to meet them. We got a few moments with Jamie and Matt, who took us through their Setlist data, reminisced about the beginning of Bullet and where the next era may take them.
First setlist on record
Both: Wow.
Jamie: Five songs.
Matt: I'm surprised there's five there. 2004... We did a five-track EP, was our first release. This was literally the start of everything. It’s weird.
The 10-Year Anniversary
Matt: O2 Academy, 25th of November.
Jamie: Ah, 2016, yeah. Obviously, the 10-year.
Matt: We only did it in the UK though. It was kind of in-between touring cycles but we wanted to do something to celebrate that 10-year milestone. Small venues, intimate, maybe eight or 10 shows, we did multiple nights in the same venue. One night we played a hit set, the next night, “The Poison” in full.
Jamie: The last track of "The Poison" closes the set perfectly, flows nicely.
Matt: Yeah, I actually wrote that song specifically to be an ending track of the album. Every album we've done, we've tried to cut the track listing on the album as what we would kind of want it to be a live set anyways. Having that mindset 20 years ago is paying off now because when we play it every night, like we have been the last few months, it just feels like a normal set.
Concert map
Matt: 48 for Australia, that's pretty wild. Argentina, I reckon Estonia's at the bottom. That was our first show with Metallica, so it wasn't a festival, it was a Metallica show and they invited us to go up and sing a song as well, which is like... Just a wild show, man.
The Future
Matt: The last album was kind of the start of the new era of the new era of Bullet. What do we want the next chapter to be? As tempting as it is to kind of be selfish and revisit older stuff that we find challenging and fulfilling to play, I've been to gigs where bands haven't done that, you leave a little bit empty. Going into this next one, I would like to spice things up again a little bit. You're not worried about too much, if it's the heaviest thing in the world, it's going to be more about the songwriting and to make every single song potential single material. But staying to true to what we want it to be at the same time. I think it'll be our biggest album to date by a mile.
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Stay tuned for news on the next era of Bullet! Check out tour dates for Bullet for my Valentine here.
