WORCESTER, Mass. - After lying dormant for six years, Boston-based hardcore/punk band
Blood For Blood 
will make their American return at this year's New England Metal and Hardcore Festival on Friday, April 15.
The band has also announced plans to record a new record this year, their first since 2004's "Serenity."
Blood for Blood reunited last year for the European Persistence Tour, which also featured Sick Of It All, Unearth, and Evergreen Terrace.
"The amount letters from our fans were so overwhelming asking when or if we were ever gonna play again," said vocalist Buddha. "It seemed now is the time to make our long over-due return. But, as always, we decide the terms as to what, when, and where Blood For Blood will play. We do what we want and we play 'cause we want to and not 'cause we need to."
Blood For Blood 2011 consists of the longtime core of Buddha, guitarist Rob Lind, and bassist Ian McFarland, along with drummer Neal Dike.
Special guests Billy Graziadei (Biohazard) and Craig Silverman (Only Living Witness) will lend their guitars to live shows in Lind's absence from the stage due to personal reasons. "We are pumped to have them join us on the road," Buddha enthused.
Blood For Blood's history began when kindred spirits Lind and Buddha met back in high school. "We were both consumed by a pervasive yet initially directionless hatred and hostility that went WAY beyond even the most troubled adolescent angst," Lind explained. "Music spoke to this turmoil in me. And spoke for it."
Lind found some solace in jamming with any and all musicians he could find, and his friend Buddha was right there along with him. "Eventually I started sticking a mic in his hand so he wouldn't just have to stand there while me and some dudes did bad covers of Black Sabbath and The Anti-heros and Carnivore," said Lind. "It turned out Buddha could sing and had a pretty distinctive voice even back then."
The two fell out of touch for a brief period and fatefully found each other once again. The pair immediately reconnected and the seeds of Blood For Blood were sewn. After six albums, the band parted ways for a variety of reasons, from family to business ventures, but the bond the guys formed would never be broken.
"I realized something when I finally met up with them personally after four years or so," Lind recalled. "One way or the other, for better or for worse, we're a f**ked up family. I don't mean that in some hardcore, tough-guy way. I mean family in the literal sense. When you've spent so much time together and have been through such intense experiences together, the collective experience transcends friendship and becomes something... larger, something immutable. Family is not necessarily a beautiful, rosy thing. Families can be the source of some of the deepest hatreds and conflicts and resentments. But at the same time, you are still family and nothing changes that. We've only just begun to do what we want to do again, but it's been comfortable and easy and natural."
Blood for Blood plans to begin work on their seventh full-length album for an undetermined label in the near future.
"I am sitting on more material than at any other point in my life," Lind said. "Over the last five or six years, I crawled through darkness up to light. And I have many tales of dread to tell the kiddies. We intend to come back the way we always have after an absence... to write another chapter. That's been the M.O. of Blood For Blood from the beginning."
The New England Metal and Hardcore Festival will take place Thursday, April14 through Saturday, April 16 at the Palladium in Worcester, Mass.
The event will feature two stages, with the Main Stage presented by Ibanez/Tama and the Second Stage sponsored by Artery Recordings. The first night of the festival will focus on up-and-coming bands, while the following nights will feature nationally-known acts from around the globe.
The lineup for Thursday is: Attack Attack, Vanna, My Children My Bride, Our Last Night, Stray From The Path, Lions Lions, Arsonist Get All The Girls, A Bullet For Pretty Boy, Armor For The Broken, This Or The Apocalypse, I, The Breather, Across The Sun, Counterparts, Too Late The Hero, City Lights, Memphis May Fire, Attila, A Plea For Purging, Dr. Acula, The Crimson Armada, This Romantic Tragedy, Capitols, An Early Ending, With Words, Legacy, Gone Astray, and Your Last Request.
Bands scheduled for Friday are: Biohazard, Blood For Blood, Bury Your Dead, Winds Of Plague, Stick To Your Guns, Close Your Eyes, Your Demise, Legend, Thy Will Be Done, Molotov Solution, Monsters, The Great Commission, The World We Knew, Murder Death Kill, Hundredth, She Has Fallen, Years Since The Storm, Terror, Trapped Under Ice, Lionheart, This Is Hell, Shai Hulud, The Carrier, Death Ray Vision, Venia, The Greenery, Born Low, Confrontation, King Conquer, Betrayal, Faces of Bayon, and Break Thru Music winner Kali Ma.
Saturday's lineup is: Hatebreed, Between The Buried And Me, Born Of Osiris, Times Of Grace, Darkest Hour, Carnifex, Job For A Cowboy, Dying Fetus, Oceano, The Ocean, Cephalic Carnage, Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza, Within The Ruins, Contortionist, Volumes, Structures, Skeletonwitch, 3 Inches Of Blood, Nails, A Life Once Lost, Revocation, Withered, Lazarus AD, Last Chance To Reason, Son Of Aurelius, Hung, Believer, Wretched, and Legion.
Monster Energy is the official energy drink of the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival 13. All In Merch is the official merchandise company and Hails & Horns is the official magazine.
Metal Blade Records, Atticus Black, D'Addario Strings and Evans Drumheads, Atticus Black, Rock Star Enegry Drink Mayhem Festival, Jak Prints, T-Mobile, Zildjian, Killer Tours, CubePasses.com, and ReturnToThePit.com are also sponsors of this year's festival. Break Thru Music (breakthrumusic.net) is hosting series of events for bands to complete for a slot on the festival. Mazur PR coordinates media inquiries and Metal Injection supplies fans with videos and interviews at metalinjection.net for a preview of all the bands. Jeremy Saffer from jeremysaffer.com and Aaron Peppelis from returntothepit.com provide all the official festival photos. This year the festival has also teamed up with a charity called Rise Above (weriseabove.org) to help children in Massachusetts get funding for them to learn instruments, play sports and go to events.
Doors open at 1 p.m. on Thursday and the festival will run from 1 to 10:45 p.m. Doors open at noon on Friday and Saturday, with the shows running from noon to 12:45 a.m. It is an all-ages event.
Tickets for Thursday cost $25. Friday and Saturday individual day tickets cost $35. A 3-day ticket costs $89. Tickets are on sale at FYE Stores, online at tickets.com or (800) 477-6849.
Performers are subject to change.
"We are really excited to be playing the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival again, especially as it's the North American launch show for the new album," said guitarist Sam Totman. "Anyone who hasn't had a chance to see new singer Marc Hudson in action will witness what a great singer he is! It's been a long time since we last played the festival and are looking forward to seeing old friends again and giving everyone a great show."