The four members of The Deadly Syndrome are Chris Richard, William Etling, … Read Full Bio ↴The four members of The Deadly Syndrome are Chris Richard, William Etling, Mike Hughes, and Jesse Hoy.

The first time I met Mike from The Deadly Syndrome, he was throwing up on my couch. He had been out drinking the night before with Will, tore the head off a paper mache dummy, wrestled it across a stranger’s front lawn and then stumbled up to my house (I was living with Will and Jesse, and soon Chris would move into the garage) where he puked all over everything and passed out.

There was a lot of that sort of thing when The Deadly Syndrome first got together. Everyone was running around having fun, working shitty jobs, and writing music all the time. The house was drowning in instruments. There were cheap old organs that somebody picked up off Craigslist. Guitars, pianos, keyboards, violins, all broken down and beat up, just laying around in case somebody needed them.

The weeks started to revolve around shows. You know how whenever someone says, “You should check out my friend’s band?” how your immediate reaction is “are you saying that just because they’re your friend?” I never had that problem. The guys attacked the stage; the audience lost their minds. Their shows were like festivals (with lots of cardboard cut outs). It was a wonderful couple of years.

And then it stopped being fun.

It’s a cliché to say that youth is fleeting. But it’s true. And it’s hard to separate youth from rock and roll. That’s not to say The Deadly Syndrome are a bunch of geriatrics, they aren’t. But after two years of being together they were four guys who loved music, but still weren’t able to do it for a living. Four guys who were getting older and starting to think about things like financial security, maybe starting a family, having a car that didn’t break down all the time, getting health insurance, etc – all the stuff that keeps making more and more noise as the years go by and you start growing up.

And growing up is tricky business in rock and roll. Because the truth is that while age doesn’t stifle creativity, it certainly encourages stagnation. And stagnation leads to a sad and boring road that either ends with too much thinking about The Good Old Days or Fat Elvis.

So after a couple of years I think the guys weren’t sure what to do. If you’ll allow me another cliché, things were starting to feel like an ending, rather than a beginning. At this point they could have very easily broken up. Left on good terms and gone their separate ways. Or they could have written another Ortolan. Similar songs played in the same venues, stretching out the good times as far as they could. Instead they moved all of their stuff into a cabin up in the woods and started over.

There weren’t a lot of updates, no hand wringing or bragging, nothing specific, just the occasional word that things were moving along. And then one day after about nine months had gone by, they let everyone know that they had finished an album and were calling it Nolens Volens.

The songs, the production, it all seems to be the work of a band that has found its strengths, and is busy seeing how far they can push them. You can hear the earlier, younger band throughout all the songs, but there’s something else there as well. A sort of self-assurance that gives each song its own life and space, along with a patience that usually isn’t associated with rock and roll.

More than anything else though, Nolens Volens is about growing up. About the give and take that comes with age and responsibility, about remembering the energy of youth and infusing it into a new, older life.

Or not. Fuck it, maybe I’m over thinking it. Maybe they just made a great record and plan to release it later this year and that’s all there is to it. After all, they’re all still in their 20’s for god’s sake! Why am I talking about growing up? There’s still plenty of time for being young, playing the music too loud, and puking all over everything just before passing out.

–Jason Greene

The Ship That Shot its Selef
The Deadly Syndrome Lyrics

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Please don't describe the way it feels to you
The way it feels
In other words
In other words

The human race it wishes to relate
Its thoughts and rhymes
To other worlds

In other words

Some things we push away, the thoughts of you
Without me
They seem to stay
And play with me

And when I listen to someone else
It makes me think
That I can kill myself
And somehow save myself

I'll catch you next time that I fall
If you promise that you'll call again
I'll call you back again

There comes a time when the lights are on
And no one's home
Because you left
You left them on

It feels good to know that someone's out of mind
Out of time
Only to think of you

And when I listen to someone else
It makes me feel like I should kill myself
And maybe save myself

And when I listen to myself
I think that everyone else should kill themselves
And maybe, save themselves

Please don't describe the way it feels to you
The way it feels
In other words
In other words

The human race it wishes to relate
Its thoughts and rhymes
To other worlds
In other words

Some things we push away, the thoughts of you
Without me
They seem to stay
And play with me

And when I listen to someone else
It makes me think

That I can kill myself
And somehow save myself

Overall Meaning

The Deadly Syndrome's song "The Ship That Shot its Self" is a song about the human struggle to connect with others and ultimately ourselves. The first verse warns against describing how certain things feel, as it may not accurately convey the true feeling. The following verses delve deeper into the theme of connecting with others and ourselves.

The second verse talks about the human desire to be understood and to relate our thoughts and feelings to others, even if they come from different worlds. This desire is contrasted in the third verse with the tendency to push away thoughts of people we love when they are not with us, but they still manage to stay and play with our minds.

The chorus is where the theme of suicide is introduced, where listening to someone else can sometimes make us contemplate taking our own lives to potentially save ourselves. The following verse takes it further, where the idea of suicide becomes not just for oneself, but something we might wish upon others in order to "save themselves."

Throughout the song, there's a sense of disillusionment towards the human experience, and the conflicting emotions and thoughts that come with it. But in the end, the chorus returns to the desire for understanding and connection, represented by the human race's wish to relate to other worlds.

Line by Line Meaning

Please don't describe the way it feels to you
Do not explain how it affects you, please

The way it feels
How one perceives emotions

In other words
To put it differently

In other words
To say it another way

The human race it wishes to relate
Mankind wants to connect

Its thoughts and rhymes
Ideas and lyrics

To other worlds
To different dimensions

In other words
Put differently

Some things we push away, the thoughts of you
Certain ideas we disregard, like thoughts of a person

Without me
When I'm not around

They seem to stay
Those ideas linger