Internal Bleeding to Continue Without Late Drummer Bill Tolley
The passing of Internal Bleeding drummer Bill Tolley is one of the more tragic stories to take place in metal this year. If you didn’t hear, Tolley served as a firefighter in his spare time and died after falling five stories off a building while fighting an apartment fire in Queens, New York.
The band had already made it clear that they still planned to participate in their tour tour with Vader starting later this month, but now a press release tells us they have every intention of soldiering on after that, too:
“Bill was having trouble getting all the vacation time needed to complete the tour, so we had a backup drummer in place and ready to go. He will be filling in. Bill would want it no other way. When we were discussing the problems with his vacation, he told Chris [Pervelis] something along the lines of, ‘You’ve gotta do it, bro. Fuck it, no matter what happens, Internal Bleeding needs to go on. You gotta do it, asshole.’ So we think it’s only appropriate that we do this tour, continue with the band, and continue to release music in Bill’s memory, and in the memory for all those metalhead men and women who have fallen. There is no other way. Metal is our life. Our love. Our passion. And to our fans, you are family: we don’t leave family hanging. We got your back, because you always had ours. Our backup drummer will be announced soon. Out of respect to Bill, please don’t ask. Love and metal always: Chris, Shaun, Chris, and Joe”
There are a few important tidbits in here, the first of which is that Internal Bleeding should be okay on tour because they already have a guy ready to play in Tolley’s place. The second is that although they have said backup ready, they don’t appear to have a long-term replacement ready. I would assume that right now they’re probably just thinking about making it through this tour without one of their brothers.
We here are MetalSucks wish Internal Bleeding the best of luck on their tour, and our thoughts go out to the band and Bill Tolley’s family. You can check out their single “Final Justice” — released in honor of Tolley — below for a preview of their upcoming album Corrupting Influence. Get the upcoming tour dates with Vader here.
