Your lyrics are I guess the most special lyrics in hardcore today. Have you ever thought about writing a “normal” song?

I think our old songs are pretty normal, like “heated” and “footsteps” and I guess it’s pretty obvious what the songs are about. So I don’t think we’ll write another one like that again, because as we have written more music we have kind of tried to ease away from playing these songs but people still like to hear them, so we still play them. But as far as it stands right now I don’t think we ever gonna write a normal hardcore song or normal lyrics at least.

Abyss’s lyrics are all connected, so when you write lyrics do you always have the final “release” in mind or do you write songs that could stand on their own? If you would write a 7” you would only have to write two songs…

At this point I would probably try to incorporate some theme into these two songs if I had to do that. Otherwise it is usually easier for me to write songs with some theme, it allows me more ways to expand imaginatively for the writing instead of writing each song as a stand-alone song with no connection to the other ones, because I think albums often work in a way that books do and the way that people can write songs that have no connection to the other songs, that sort of breaks it up. I’m not gonna say it doesn’t flow because there are a ton of records where the songs don’t fit together but they still flow. I think it’s like a book where all the chapters fit together that’s how I view the writing of lyrics

Is there a song that you wish you had never written or had written in another way?

Yeah, I wish we never wrote “heated”.

Ha, I’m asking because of that song…

Yeah, I guess I’m glad that I wrote it. I wrote it when I was 17. At this time I was angry and I had this fight with my father and I was raging through the streets of Boston, with just a shirt on during a snow storm. To me it was kind of a paradoxical state, because I was boiling hot and angry and it was like the coldest day of the year in the city that was when I wrote “heated”. Obviously, I’ve calmed down and matured since then. When we play this song it’s not actually the song I believe the most in when we play it. I actually talked about that last night, I don’t believe in that song anymore necessarily, but since I believed it when I wrote it we still play it.

Is it kind of disappointing to see that kids react more to that song, because they have something they can scream, most of your other songs don’t have that sing-along element like “why should I love the world…”?

I think a lot of people react more to that song because Guns Up! and Have Heart used that line, so that was the one song that everyone would have on their ipod by shipwreck and also its our catchiest one… But I’m kinda used to that being the song that everyone likes and if we could maintain a steady line-up, that knew all the Shipwreck songs, we wouldn’t play it, even if people wanted to hear it. But since we have always people filling in it’s the song they always know so we have to play it…

You already mentioned that Have Heart used that line, Guns Up! used that line too, how did that happen? I mean yours is the initial one…

Yeah, ours came out way before the other two, which a lot of people don’t know. Which is why a lot of people always ask “why is there a Guns Up? line on the shirt?”… I was at the studio when Dan was recording Outlive and I was doing the song that I was doing the lyrics on. I actually wrote the lyrics to that song in the studio. And at the end I had a pretty good chorus written and Dan was saying that it would be a cool idea if we used the chorus of “heated” because he sings on the 7”. And I said “that’s fine” and little did I know back then that the Guns Up! record would be so huge and that no one would sing along when we played it but when they played their version the entire place would sing along. That doesn’t really matter, and then Pat used it. Or he doesn’t use the exact same lyrics but he used like the inspiration of the lyric for “unbreakable”, because he thought it would fit good with the song and I think he might have had the idea before the Guns Up! record.

It sounds like he’s answering your question

I’m answering his question. The other way around…

Your lyrics are all very metaphorical; but you say that they all are related to the “real life”, your life, which is sometimes really hard to imagine…I think you said in another interview that you often explain the meaning of the song “lotus” and that it is about how men treat women, so lets talk about another song, what is the story behind “Miasma”?

We don’t play “Miasma” that much live. Lyrically it is kind of about the stagnation of every day life. The song takes place in a desert. It has to do with the feeling, if you think of this almost stereotypical image of a desert, things wasting away in the desert. That was what was inspiring me right there, because I wrote a lot of “Abyss” while I was at work, and I was watching myself waste away, my mind was so numbed from working and when I say “vultures flying, gliding…” that’s how I felt at work and at the end it was this emptiness and I sing “some coal will never be diamonds”, like some people might work their way to being rich but I’ll always gonna be working shitty jobs, that’s always gonna be who I am. I thought it was a good transition to “Lotus” because it was that same mindless behaviour that would allow me to behave how I behaved, which turned me to “Lotus”. I think it floats all really well.

In school the teachers always ask you to interpret songs and poetry. Imagine Shipwreck songs would be interpreted in the English classes. Which song would you like to have interpreted in school?

I think “Samur”. I think that song is pretty well written and it’s concise, it almost reads like a sonnet. It’s about how sometimes you let your mind get attached to things. In this case it was a girl and I waited all this time on tour and I was trying to work out a relationship and at the same time suppressing my actions and activities because I was like, I’m gonna hold off because it’s one girl that is worth it and it the song I say that through the rain and I’m basically floating in the ocean and I’m dying of thirst and I could drink the ocean water or I could wait for the rain and as I’m waiting for the rain and as it finally comes, it won’t rain, it doesn’t happen. So it’s kind of a lovesong, it’s kind of the only lovesong that I’ve ever written and at the same time you can’t really tell that it is about a girl. But that’s what it is. I think that could be a good one for English students to figure out. The name “Samur”, people have no idea, what the hell it means and actually it is a thai word for “dragon”, but the girl I wrote it about is from the Caribbean and she grew up on a ship called the “Samur” so at the time I wrote it, it was like the only decoder I could put in, even for the rest of the band to figure it out. It’s like a ship you can rent out and people can sail it and I have a bunch of tshirts that say it on it. So people realized and figured it out.

But you would need some background knowledge to interpret it correctly…

Yeah of course, it’s like figuring out “Ulysses” by James Joyce, if you don’t know who James Joyce is it won’t make any sense, but if you do, it will work itself out.

Literature is obviously a big influence for you, which kind of literature do you read? What can you recommend?

At the time I was writing “Abyss” it was a lot of classic literature, like Homer, the Illiad, the Odyssey, and then myths, which don’t have authors. Myths and religious texts and then a lot of early English poets, metaphysical poets like John Donne, he’s probably one of influences on me and then a lot of modernist writers like T.S. Elliot and James Joyce. “Waste Land” by T.S. Elliot would be a sweet hardcore record it’s just such a far off poem. I think there is a lot to be connected between early literature and hardcore, because at their time these guys were like the sub cultural icons. There wasn’t many ways to drive against society but they found there ways. The fact that people used to burn books in front of libraries as form of protest is pretty remarkable considering how much smut is available today….

In terms of the new recording, more so I guess there has been literature that could inspire but it hasn’t really changed that much, if anything I’ve tried to stay away from any other influence, to write it on my own, how I want it written so I can’t really say that there’s been anyone particular, I will say however, that the minimalist philosophy has influenced my writing, trying to keep it concise and I don’t necessarily believe in the whole idea of pure brevity having some sort of epic structure like family crest have like 3 words on it and these words are supposed to be so ambiguous that they represent the family. Or the way that countries do, or like a building will say “veritas” and stuff like that, I don’t necessarily think that this is such a proper style but for me it’s been like kind of a way to make the lyrics, not more to the point, but not to use adverbs that much and just to allow it to stand on its own. And try away from punctuation just to have it be what it is. And that has been lot like the way we’ve been writing it musically too, just keep it simple, no effects or anything, just simple guitar, drums, bass and vocals.

How about literature from more recent years…

Lyrically? Not lyrically but things that like in contemporary literature: I like Cormac McCarthy… He’s great. I told to read the road, didn’t I?

Yeah, I read it, and the border trilogy too…

Ah, yeah, how did you like it?

Awesome

Yeah of course, I think Cormac McCarthy is in modern day, the most brilliant author there is…(thinks) I guess I like John Updike a lot, he’s like a contemporary confessional writer, he writes a lot about real life experiences… At this point in my life I mostly stick to… I like to read a lot of William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, early southern writers. Right now, I’m reading “the fountainhead” by Ann Rand. She was a, I don’t know what you’d call her, she’s dead now, so it’s nothing too contemporary… I haven’t read “Twilight” or anything. Apparently in “Twilight II” there is a character that has the same name as me, so everywhere I go, people who know my full name, go “oh, just like in twilight. Have you read that?” – I haven’t.

When I see the pictures on your myspace page or read the lyrics I always get the feeling that you are longing for the horizon, longing to see things, being places that you aren’t right now, but on the other hand “squall” has the line “don’t tell me the horizon harbors better days”... what do you make of that?

I don’t have an answer. I don’t know where I want to be. When I’m home, I wanna be on tour. When I’m on tour I wanna have fun and enjoy it but I wanna be home, it’s a battle, a constant conflict, which is why Shipwreck is what it is. I mean, we love touring but at the same time we love being home. Now we’ve been touring for a few years, we really enjoy the time we get at home. For instance, I never really used to think about this, I have a young sister, before, when I was on tour it wouldn’t really matter because I’d see her when I get home, but now I miss her birthdays all the time, I miss her dance recitals, her softball games and stuff like that, it makes it a little bit harder to say “I’m gonna be gone for 6 months” etc.. I don’t really know what it is I’m looking for right now…

Still searching…

Yeah, definitely.

Are you confident that you find it?

I hope so. I’m pretty confident. I think for every person, there is not necessarily a dream, a certain term of success. The world is in us and you get to certain level of complacency where you realize that within the world you can make your own world, that’s when you settle down and build a family. I believe in that. You get into hardcore at a time when you are immature and can’t really handle your life and kind of use it like an oven, to cook until you are ready for the real world. That’s when a lot of people drop out and do their own thing. That’s when you have all these mixed interests and you ask yourself “should I still be here?, Should I be somewhere else?”. It’s troublesome.

Argh, I made a mistake I had this cool question about Zenith, and the line that still a “piece of the puzzle is missing from my mind”… now I already gave it away?

Yeah, that’s basically what we’ve been talking about. Basically what I’m trying to demonstrate in that song is that when you sing in a hardcore band that has some sort of notoriety, people assume that you have things figured out more then they do. People heed Pat’s words or Greg from Trial’s words more then they would to words of another person in the crowd. And what I want them to realize is, that I don’t have answers. I’m just a kid trying to figure it all out too.

You have some Ocean saving organizations/initiatives linked on your myspace… What do you love about Oceans?

I grew up right on the ocean. Boston is a very nautical based city. My dad worked on ships for the first 10 years of my life, my uncles worked on ships. It has been a part of my life and I think the ocean takes up so much for the planet and people don’t even care about it. The ocean itself is such a balancing element and you realize how insignificant you are. I think it’s a good place to go to bring you back to zero and to realize, whatever thing is stressing you out or whatever problem you have doesn’t matter that much. There’s people out there who have worse problems…At the same time, life is what it is, you have to take what you can out of it.

On a side note, I always thought it would be cool if someone made a movie or wrote a book about what it’d be like if all the oceans would be drained and someone would get to walk from Boston to Europe or something. I always thought that this would be cool

I heard some rumours that you are writing a novel, is there something true about that?

I do a lot of writing myself just because I have to go to school now for literature. Literature and Law, so I do a lot of writing, I do a lot of publishing with my school, publishing short stories and stuff. I think a lot of my experience between life and touring, I don’t want to say I’m more insightful than most people but I definitely perceive things differently than most people do. Sometimes I just get too inspired and start writing and I guess you could say I’m working on a novel so to speak. It takes place in a small Massachusetts town, it’s kind of a timeless setting it just has to do with, I don’t want to say good and evil because it sounds so cheesy… it’s mostly about evil and the only good in the whole town is this small kid, whose parents have been murdered and no one in the town has the heart to tell the kid and every day he goes to the bakery to get old bread to feed all these seagulls and birds. It comes down to the priest and the deputy and one of them has to decide who is going to tell him, neither knows really what to do. All of it is again reflecting different aspects of life… So yeah, that’s probably what you’ve heard about it.

So, Abyss came out at the end of 2007, so, when can we expect a new record? Do you already have a concept?

I don’t know, it’s gonna take forever. We’ve been writing it and I guess we gonna record it in October and it’s all up to Deathwish at that point, I don’t know how things work, despite how many times they explain it to me. So it’s probably gonna be out next summer. It’s called “placid”.

It’s most definitely the most mature and technical and complicated thing we’ve ever written, but at the same time, as I said, it’s very minimal, lyrically and musically. It’s all about sleeping, which bums me out, because I’ve heard that Mastodon has put out a record about sleeping, which makes me so mad, because everyone’s gonna compare it to that.

Basically “Abyss” ends with me falling asleep, so it’s about different sorts of escapism and dreams and nightmares, different ways of demonstrating good and bad things. I’m pretty proud of it at this point. I think it’s gonna go over a lot of kids heads, not to sound snobby, but that’s just how it is. Just like “Abyss” took a lot for people to get into it. I mean it’s an accessible record if you give it the time to be. It’s not one of the first listen stage-dive and sing-along records. And I think when it comes out; we are not going to be able to play songs like “heated” because the juxtaposition of new songs with songs like “heated” would just be two too different spectrums.

I scrolled through some other interviews you did. Is there a question you’ve been waiting to be asked but it never came??

Not really. I don’t know. I get so sick of interviews sometimes because when an interview starts with: state your name and who you are stuff, I just want to be like “you don’t care who I am” you know what I mean? Don’t start an interview like that. It’s not like I’m filling out an job application. You do the work, you can tell the people that you did an interview with JD from Shipwreck, I don’t feel it’s necessary to say “my name is JD”…

I guess people have never touched is, right when we started we were like a mid-90’s band, and I wanted to show people that I was so anti-fashion and all the bullshit hardcore that I just wore extra large tshirts every day and stuff and no one really noticed, it was almost as it was expected, like “oh they are this mid-90s band” but I was just trying to demonstrate: “look, I don’t look cool, I’m not like a cool person, that’s not what I’m here to do, we are not here to be a crucial band”. Hardcore has so much structure these days, so it’s really hard to flow between the different styles and genres…

Ok, the last words are yours…

I regret doing this interview because I’m missing my favourite band “An Albatross”…

Oh, you should have told me…

I’m kidding… the new Rise and Fall record is really good and I hope everyone gives it a chance. It sucks that Have Heart is breaking up, but people have to understand that all giants have to sleep. They have done everything they can do…

When you hear our new record, don’t hate it right away. Give it some time.