Within The Ruin's Joe Cocchi Elite's Everything

Massachusetts act Within The Ruin's has dealt with line-up changes, more importantly label changes having been with Victory Records for 4 years and now with eOne and Good Fight Music, it's a whole turnaround.

These guys have got nothing but "new" on the brain with that they have got their third album "Elite" out soon, all new tours happening throughout this year and so much more it's nuts. Guitarist Joe Cocchi took the time to discuss this new release and the touring they got lined up.

1. Where did the name, Within The Ruins come from and mean?

Joe: Yeah been asked that a million times. We started playing together back in high school and one of the guitarists came up with it "From Within The Ruins" so we dropped the from and now it's Within The Ruins and it is what it is today and it stuck. There is no meaning behind it other than that's what we've been for these past 10 years.

2. You guys have been a band for nearly 10 years, what comes to mind and do you plan on celebrating?

Joe: We're always celebrating I think it's been a long road going through members with our drummer. But we're always celebrating just signed with eOne and Good Fight Music, so this line up as of 2010 is one we're excited about and we're stroked for that new day and new year for us.

3. You went from being signed with Victory Records to now being with eOne & Good Fight Music, how has the transition been for you guys?

Joe: I think it went smooth it did take a while to finally a label we wanted when shopping for labels. But it did take a long time and were with Victory for 4 years so legal issues but honestly once the new music was up and the new album everything is returning to normal and we're happy with the label now, the promotions, we couldn't ask for more really.

4. What do you think eOne & Good Fight Music can bring to the table for Within The Ruins?

Joe: I think they can continue to do what Victory had done. They're huge independent label  working with a small group of people that wants to focus on us and always keeping in touch doing things for us without us needing to ask them. So the album will be available everywhere so its just awesome to have a backing like that.

5. What's your take on Elite as a whole?

Joe: I think it's our best stuff so far. We worked a lot harder on it. Once you put a few albums out and experience what the music does to you it effects you when writing the music. So we focused more on the song writing and lyrically content. Sticking everything together made it way more mature and just a stronger record. This is a variety of an album than our older stuff that sounded the same so I've heard.

6. Why did you want to call this album, Elite? Is this a concept album?

Joe: I don't think I would consider it a concept record but maybe a record like that will come in the future. This album "Elite" was something we couldn't even top we wanted it to be our best we could do and be proud of it. We wanted to stick with the "one word" title staying with that so I thought it sounded catchy.

7. How does this album compare and differ from your previous material?

Joe: Its more thought out and put together, production is great on it. Our older stuff a lot of sloppy things can be heard but all of that comes with experience. We just focused on this album keeping that sound trying new things and see what the fans think of it.

8. You also shot two music videos with director Kevin J. Custer, when will those be released? Can you tell me about the concepts for them?

Joe: We did the two videos with Kevin Custer this past weekend doing both in the same day. We shot them at this old warehouse that had this cool vibe to it. I think the plan was to release one of the videos the day the album is released. "Feeding Frenzy" and "New Holy War", are the two videos one is a performance style and the other is a story based with some performance clips. So those should be out within the next few weeks.

9. You will be doing a tour in the spring, if you could think of one thing you would like to accomplish the most through that tour what would that be?!

Joe: I'd like to have a good time because it's what we do and hopefully gain some new fans. We're playing with some bands who we've played with before so I think all of the bands on both tours would be a good opportunity to showcase our style and make some new friends and fans.

10. What have you done to prepare yourselves for this tour?

Joe: What haven't we done? This band is never ending it's not like write an album, tour the album, new album, no its not much like that. We got to buy new gear, play the new songs, practice, relearn the songs, some of which we haven't even learned how to play. So that's what we do when preparing for tour.

11. When it comes to performing each and every night does the time stand still or does it fly by when performing?

Joe: I'd say when we do perform it's enjoyable and usually does fly by. It's the best time of day for us and once our set is over we wish we could have played longer. Those 30 or 40 minute sets makes our day because  the rest of the day we keep ourselves busy or are driving doing our own thing.

12. Is there any song that when you play it live on stage makes your adrenaline levels kick in and make you want to go hyper?

Joe: Yes definitely we play the best songs when it comes to performing live. Now we've narrowed it down to the best songs that get the best response "Invade" is one of those songs that everyone knows. So you can feel and tell that the people are waiting for that song. So that's one of my favorites.

13. How easy is it to keep the motivation going on a daily basis for Within The Ruins?

Joe: It's very easy especially when we're on tour, we feed off the shows, with the new material and new album kids will be responding more to it and want to hang out after the shows it's stuff like that, that keeps us going and doing what we do. So that's the good thing.

14. Once the tour is over what do you have planned afterwards?

Joe: The rest of the year is still in the works. We're booked until about May then have that month off. Then working on landing a summer tour but we'll see what happens, our goal is to tour, tour tour, because we hate to be home.

15. Anything else you want to add?

Joe: Come out see us play, new album is coming out and can't wait to hang out with everyone at the shows we have coming up.