Within The Ruins: Raging On The New Reign Tour
Joe Cocchi and Tim Goergen of Within The Ruins at The Glass House in Pomona
Within The Ruins: Raging On The New Reign Tour
Within The Ruins recently completed a cross country run on The New Reign Tour with Born Of Osiris and Volumes. Debuting songs from their latest album Halfway Human (now available of EOne/Good Fight Records), Within The Ruins would launch the devastation early on, clearly captivating the early arrivals at The Glass House in Pomona! Prior to their absolutely explosive set, we caught up with lead vocalist Tim Goergen to find out more about the themes behind Halfway Human, life on the road, touring with the like of Morbid Angel on Summer Slaughter, and a whole lot more! Read on…
Introduce yourself and tell me what you do in Within The Ruins.
My name is Tim. I am the vocalist for Within The Ruins.
How has the New Reign Tour been going so far, what have been some of the highlights?
It’s been awesome. We’ve been out with BOO before, and we are happy to be part of the tour. All the shows have been packed. Almost sold out every night. And, yeah, it’s been a good time.
Halfway Human, is there any story behind the title of the new album?
No, not really. All the songs kind of have their own identity. Lot of the songs have a lot of dark subject matter because, when we were writing it, I kinda got myself into a dark mindset. Just with, you know, life gets hard when you are a full time musician. So, I kinda dove into that on a couple of songs. And there’s a couple of songs that are like out of the box thinking. This and, there’s a variety of subject matter.
Select any two songs, what inspired the lyrics?
The single Beautiful Agony I wrote about sex basically. Just, human sexuality, you know, and just the feelings that transpire when you are having intercourse with someone. And I tried to listen to a lot of Marilyn Manson and NIN to get like vocal inspiration.
And, what else? Let’s see. There’s a song I wrote called In Complete Harmony. Because we all work like day jobs when are home. So, I kinda wrote that for the working man. Just getting up, going to work and asking yourself if it’s all worth it. And at the end of the day, it’s all worth it.
Within The Ruins devastating The Glass House
How does Halfway Human compare to the previous Within The Ruins releases?
We expanded upon the sound that we had with Elite and Phenomena, and we added the new element, which is clean singing with our new bassman Paolo. He has that angelic voice so we put it to good use. We worked with Jim Fogarty for all the melodic singing. He did a lot of work for the Killswitch and All That Remains. That came out great. That’s something you can definitely expect to see more from us.
How was that, adding more clean singing?
It was a little nerve racking, ‘cuz with everyone’s kind of leaning that way. And, you don’t want to piss people off so, we tried to do it and keep our sound. Keep true but also you know, try to widen our fan base a little bit.
What can we expect from a live Within The Ruins show in 2017?
A lot of energy. Same as usual man. We just try to go a thousand percent up there and make sure everyone is having a good time, and everyone is moving. And, we make sure everyone gets their money’s worth. ‘Cuz we drive hours upon hours everyday to come and play for you these twenty-five minutes, forty-five minute sets, so we try to make the most of it.
Any strange or scary happenings while on the road?
Our van broke down in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming a couple of days ago. We had to wait for that to get done. We rented a box truck and a car to make the Salt Lake City show. Then we drove back to pick up our van. Our van was fixed and then, a snow storm came. We got snowed in for two days and we had to miss two shows, so that sucked. Trials and tribulations on the road, man!
What was that like touring with Morbid Angel on the Summer Slaughter Tour?
It was a trip man. First time I ever saw Morbid Angel, I was like sixteen or seventeen. I saw them with Pantera and Slayer, and I was like blown away. I didn’t really get into death metal that much until I saw Morbid Angel, so to be on tour with them was a trip and a half. Those dudes been around for a minute man.
You guys in the past have covered Metallica and Kansas. Has Metallica or Kansas ever heard or commented on your covers?
No, not that I know of. I keep on waiting for that email or call one day from Lars or James. Hey you ripped it up on our song. That’d be the ultimate, Metallica is one of our favorite bands. That’d be super cool, but not yet unfortunately.
Paolo, from Silence the Messenger. How did he become involved in the band?
When our old bass player Andrew left the band it was because he just had a baby girl and we totally understood. It’s hard to be on the road and have a kid, so we were going through all the people that we knew that have toured before – because when you get a new member you have to relearn who they are. So we picked someone that we knew and was a good musician. Paolo fit right in. It’s been great.
You had toured with Silence the Messenger before?
We never toured with them but because they’re from San Antonio, whenever we’d play there they’d either open or come hang out. We’ve known those guys since I joined the band in 2009. I had met them on my first tour with Within The Ruins. So we go way back.
What do you think has kept Within The Ruins going for so long? Original members have been in it since 2003. You’ve been in since 2009.
We all share a common vision. We want to take it as far as it can go. It’s kind of like a heroin addict that chases the dragon. We kind of chase the dream a little bit. It’s addicting. being on tour, playing shows, we’ve had breaks where we’re not active for a few months and we’re all just itching to get out. We need to play some shows, what’s going on? It’s been a part of our lives for so long, it just keeps us going.
What’s up next for Within The Ruins after this tour is all over?
We have a month off, we’re doing another US tour which I can’t announce yet because we just confirmed it. But be on the lookout for that, it’ll be mostly West Coast, southwest, Florida, mid west.
Any messages for Within The Ruins fans who are reading this right now?
Thank you so much. Keep supporting us, man. You guys keep us alive. We have some diehard fans who mean the world to us.
Within The Ruins is:
Tim Goergen – Vocals
Joe Cocchi – Guitar
Paolo Galang – Bass
Kevin “Drummer” McGuill – Drums
(Interview by Ken Morton – Photos by Jack Lue)
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