BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE Trivia — 14 Entries
14 sourced facts about BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE.
Trivia
Their first appearance in front of a Japanese audience was Summer Sonic in 2005. By Sony Music's account, all they had released that year were the debut EP and the single "4 Words" — and on those two records they took a second consecutive Download, their first Reading and Leeds, and Summer Sonic. Their first headline tour of Japan came in January 2006: three nights at the Club Quattro venues in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, which the same text records as full houses.
As of 2026 their most recent Japanese dates are the two nights of December 2023: Toyosu PIT in Tokyo on the 6th and Gorilla Hall Osaka on the 7th. Both opened at 18:00 for a 19:00 start, standing only, at 8,500 yen in advance and 9,500 yen on the door, tax included and the drink charge separate. The Japanese band Sable Hills supported in Tokyo. Creativeman Productions promoted the tour; general sale was 7 October 2023, and there was a route for buyers outside Japan as well.
The second album, Scream Aim Fire, went to number one on Oricon's international chart in Japan — a placing recorded in Sony Music's own profile of the band — while entering the top five in both Britain and the United States. A metal record charting that high in several countries at once is what marks this as the album on which the band's standing changed. The Japanese edition reached shops first, from BMG Japan on 23 January 2008, ahead of Britain on the 28th and America on the 29th.
The band's earlier name is widely recorded as Jeff Killed John. In 2018, though, asked to confirm or deny the things written about him one at a time, Matt Tuck called the account that they changed their name from Jeff Killed John complete fiction — and then said, in the same answer, that Jeff Killed John was something they came up with when they were about fifteen, after a stupid incident at school. He confirms the name existed; what he rejects is the story of a change of name. This site sets both halves of his answer down rather than choosing one.
The eighth studio album has taken a long time. In an interview reported in December 2025, Matt Tuck said it was still in writing and pre-production, that they would go back in on 5 January to finish that, and that they had set aside time from around 1 February to track the record properly. He admitted it had taken longer than they expected, and described working from hotel rooms on tour with a guitar and laptops. As for how it sounds, he called it a cross between the last album, 2010's Fever and 2005's The Poison — a mash-up, as he put it, of all the big moments this band has had.
In the year of Scream Aim Fire they came to Japan twice. May brought their third and largest Japanese tour to that point; then, on 18 October, they played Loud Park '08 at Saitama Super Arena for the first time, billed as second headliner. Two nights later, on 20 October, came a head-to-head at Shinkiba Studio Coast advertised as the "Avenged Sevenfold vs Bullet For My Valentine Special Gig". Both appear side by side in the announcement Warner Music Japan published that September. Four years on from Summer Sonic 2005, their name had reached the top of a Japanese festival bill.
On 8 March 2013 the band played a one-off at LIQUIDROOM in Ebisu, Tokyo, billed as the Riot in Tokyo 2013 special gig for the release of Temper Temper. It started at 19:00 and cost 5,000 yen including tax, with the drink charge separate — an unusually small room for a band of their size — and it sold out. Tickets had gone on sale on 16 February; Creativeman promoted it.
They have won Best British Band at the Kerrang! Awards three years running. The figure comes from the artist text Creativeman published for the 2023 Japanese tour, which lists Best Single, Best Live Band and Best British Newcomer alongside it, and adds more than a billion streams in the United States and three albums certified gold. The same text closes on the point that the bands who shaped them — Iron Maiden, Metallica — became the bands who took them out on tour.
As of September 2026, opening the band's own site at bulletformyvalentine.com gets you neither a discography nor a tour schedule. What it shows is one line — "The end was always the plan" — and a link marked ENTER. The teasing of the eighth album began on 16 September 2026, with a post to the same effect appearing on social media the same day. This is why there is no official page listing the current line-up, and why this site cites the promoter's event page for the four members instead.
In 2024, the twentieth year of The Poison, the band's own channel re-posted films from the beginning: an HD version of "Hand of Blood" on 15 November and a 4K version of "Tears Don't Fall" on 6 December. A twentieth-anniversary edition of the album followed on 29 November, and the re-uploads were part of the same run. The album page on this site uses that 4K version rather than the older upload of the same song — one official film per song, at the highest definition available, is the rule this site follows.
Matt Tuck first picked up a guitar at fourteen, and the first song he learned to play was Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". He said so himself in a 2018 interview, adding that Nirvana's songs are great for their simplicity — the same doorway a great many guitarists of his generation came through. What he would go on to write is music in which screaming and singing sit in one song; where it started was three or four chords.
In the summer of 2007 Matt Tuck's throat stopped the band's touring schedule. By their own announcement he had been due to have a tonsillectomy in mid-July, but unforeseen complications meant his doctor brought the operation forward at the last minute. He recovered well, but was ordered not to sing for at least four weeks, and several shows went with it — among them MTV's Campus Invasion in Germany and a Metallica support at Wembley in London on 8 July. In the same announcement the band said they would go back into the studio to finish the follow-up to The Poison as soon as his voice allowed.
Jason Bowld became the band's permanent drummer on 4 December 2017 — but he had been playing for two years by then. By the band's own announcement he had been in the seat since November 2015 and had played every show since. The same statement said they had been working on new music since April and that the sixth album was ninety-nine per cent finished, and thanked Michael "Moose" Thomas for everything he had given the band. Bowld had played with Matt Tuck before, in Tuck's side project Axewound.
In June 2021 the band headlined the main stage at Download — their first time at the top of that bill, after close to two decades of playing the festival. In a Metal Hammer feature Matt Tuck looked back at first standing on a stage that size in 2004: they had never played anywhere that big, he said, and it was challenging and demanding but felt like a big moment. Of the 2021 night he said it was very familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, as though the previous eighteen months had not happened.