Interview: Within The Ruins' Joe Cocchi
By Eric Perzanowski, Contributor
Within The Ruins is a four-piece “progressive metalcore” band from Westfield, Mass. The band has unique mix of masterful musicianship and melodic riffing, and the music is a unique take on the metalcore genre. Within The Ruins’ most recent album, Elite, peaked at number two on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. Guitarist Joe Cocchi spent some time with ACRN at a recent tour date with Whitechapel, Carnifex and Cruel Hand to discuss the Massachusetts metal scene, the band’s new album and some of the origins of the band.
How has coming from a metal scene as rich as Massachusetts impacted Within The Ruins both artistically and in terms of making a name for you and your band?
Joe Cocchi: The scene was very saturated, and very up-and-coming when we were in high school. We’d go to shows and watch bands like Killswitch [Engage] and All That Remains, The Acacia Strain and Shadows Fall. There were just so many bands that were blowing up and going on at the time. We’d just watch shows, try to play shows with them, try to sell tickets to play shows with those bands. I don’t know, I guess when you’re surrounded by stuff like that, you kind of want to be involved. It was just a strong scene, so it’s kind of like, “Hey we can do that too,” and we just fought to get to the level of those bands because they were right in front of us from where we were.
How supportive were some of these bands towards you guys?
We know a few of the guys from those bands here and there. Nothing major, but everyone in western Massachusetts is very supportive of other bands because--I’m sure it’s like this in other places too--but it just seems like western Mass is very much about supporting upcoming artists because everyone was there at one point. So yeah, all the bigger bands were supportive of the local acts because they could turn out to be another one of those bands. It helped us continue on, and do it throughout high school, past high school and past college and just seeing that it can be done.
This is the first date of the tour with Whitechapel, Carnifex and Cruel Hand. How does it feel to back out on tour?
It feels good, man. I wish our tour was a little bit longer, but we did have some serious time off--we had like four or five months off. We were out in March a little bit with Oceano doing some festivals and stuff. We took time off to write and record a whole album, so it was nice, but it feels good to be back out finally.
If I remember correctly, Within The Ruins has toured with both Whitechapel and Carnifex in the past. What’s it like being on tour with them again?
It’s cool, man, because all of the bands have grown so much and Whitechapel has been one of those bands that have really helped us out. I mean they took us out on what we consider--actually Carnifex too--they took us out on what we consider our first big tours. Like, we made friends with those guys. Both those bands, they both took us out on their headliners--this was a few years ago. And yeah, they helped us out, and it’s cool because now we’re here two years later. We’ve been friends since we’ve been out, and we’re just kind of reuniting, and it’s cool to see the growth of each band and how they’re all just the same dudes.
In just a couple of days, Within The Ruins will be playing the New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. How does it feel having a festival of that level essentially in your backyard?
We’ve been going to Metal Fest just to watch Metal Fest as fans since we were in high school--since we were 14 and 15 years old. That was a long time ago, so to even be able to play Metal Fest is a huge thing for us. It feels cool. It puts western Massachusetts on the map, just as much as any of those bands we talked about earlier.
How many times have you played Metal Fest?
This will be, I believe, our fourth year playing Metal Fest. The first year we played, we were on the third stage, which was down the street and it wasn’t even in the same building as Metal Fest, but they did a third stage that year. That was cool, but we had like 20 people, as opposed to however many on the main stage at the Palladium. The next time we were on the second stage, and the time after that we played main stage really early. I think this will be our fourth and we’re playing at like six this year. It’s very exciting, man. We never could have imagined us actually playing main stage, or being at Metal Fest when we went to it 10 years ago. It’s crazy.
You said earlier that Within The Ruins has an album out this summer. Were there any stylistic changes, or lyrical themes that you guys tried out on this album?
Musically, I think what we do with every album is we capitalize on the highlights of each album, and we kind of build off of those for guitar and music-wise because I don’t write the lyrics, I write the music. But we build off whatever parts end up being like, “Man, that is what we think is the coolest part.” We’ll remember parts like that and build off those for the next album.
It’s like a compilation of the best things we think we’ve done so far and some new stuff. There’s a lot of guitar effects and ambient stuff, and some stuff you just wouldn’t expect from Within The Ruins, but we made it work. And lyrically, Tim [Goergen, vocalist] based all the lyrics off of comic book characters. He’s into that kind of stuff, and it’s not necessarily like, “Hey, this song is Spider-Man,” or “This song is Wolverine,” but he based the lyrics off of the story of each character, kind of. It came out really cool, and you can relate to it however you like--that was Tim’s thing on it.
Where did the name Within The Ruins come from?
I knew you were gonna ask me that [laughs]. Honestly, our drummer and I had been playing together in high school for a few years, not under any name, just jamming and stuff. In 2002 or 2003, we started to get some members--we got a guitar player and he’s still a good buddy of ours--but he was playing guitar with me, and he came up with the name. It was originally “From Within The Ruins,” and we had been trying to think of names for like months, but we couldn’t decide on a goddamn name. He just said it outside one time after practice, and we were like “Ah, yeah, alright. Maybe drop the ‘from,’ and we could use that for a little bit.” We never had plans to be a band this long. We were just like “Yeah, that’s cool, we’ve got a show coming up soon, and we need a MySpace, so sure, we’ll call it that.” And that’s just what it became. We couldn’t ever change it after that, we were just stuck with it. There’s no serious meaning behind it, it’s just what someone threw out there, and what we still are [laughs].
Being one of two original founding members of the band, how have the lineup changes affected the band musically and on a personal level?
Well, this band’s my life and our drummer’s life, and we’ve made serious decisions about continuing on as a band over going to college or going to do this job or that job, or whatever. We just kept doing this. It’s a serious thing, but it takes people like you to also continue this thing on. Tim, we just knew forever. And he joined the band and I would say the first album with Tim, Invade, I think we were still all feeling it out, you know. He had his style, and we were just rushed into it, and we did a new album with Tim as our singer, and we were like “Okay, that’s what it is.” Personally, it doesn’t bother me as long as Drummer [nickname of drummer Kevin McGuill] and I, and Tim and Andrew [Tate, bassist] are here now and the band’s still going, then that’s cool. It definitely took a few years for us to all mold together, and I think, kind of like talking about the newer album, I think we finally got it with us all molding and feeling in the same place. You know, [lineup changes] happens, man, and you just gotta continue on [laughs].
Several tracks like “Versus” and “Cross Buster” appear to be direct attacks on religion. What role would you say that religion or irreligion has in Within The Ruins’ music?
I honestly think that at the time, that stuff was a little bit immature of us. And at the time, it just was what it was, and now when I look back on it, I just think, “Man, we were just young.” I don’t think there was a reason for that, it was just that at the time, there was something that was getting to us, or to Tim. And [Invade] came out, and then we were like, “Whoa, whoa.” I was brought up Catholic, so was Tim--he went to Catholic school his whole life--and so was Drummer and we all just kind of went away from it. At some point in our lives, there were things going on in the scene and in the people around us were like preaching to us, and we were living it, and it had to do with touring and traveling, and we were like, “Enough with this shit,” so we just kind of went for it on a couple songs. But I think we were just younger and a little bit more immature. At the time, it felt right, but there ain’t too much of that left. On the new album, there’s not really anything like that.
