Inspired By A Hero's Journey, 'Haven' Became A Bigger Project Than Marianas Trench Expected

When Canadian pop-punk foursome Marianas Trench announced it was time to get a new album rolling, timing was not on their side.

New house, new baby, new pursuits; this trifecta of milestones collided in such a way that it gave frontman and songwriter Josh Ramsay’s usual meticulous approach to making an MT album a solid rattle and pushed the release date of the band’s sixth album out by six months.

As far as excuses go, these kinds of key life moments are pretty tight in anyone’s book. For Ramsay, on the eve of Haven’s release, reflecting on just how the album was made amidst the chaos is cause for celebration.

“Haven ended up being a bigger project than I expected it to be. I don't think I've ever gone back to the drawing board more times on a record than I did this time around.

“And as soon as there's a newborn baby in the house, your productivity goes waaaaay down!”

Back in 2003, the early outfit Ramsay assembled around him to create edgy but fun pop punk at the height of the golden emo age was the rudimentary beginnings of Marianas Trench.

A gifted and committed musician and songwriter since his early teens, Ramsay’s evolution in the band and as an independent musical creative has dotted his decades-long career with chart-scaling hits, sold-out tours around the world and awards and accolades. Writing and performing on mega singles for artists like Carly Rae Jepsen, Nickelback, and more is just another feather in his cap.

So it comes as a surprise when he admits to going “back to the drawing board” more times on MT’s latest Haven than for any of the band’s previous five albums.

“Ultimately, I was inspired by this book called The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. He came up with this concept called the ‘hero's journey’, where he analysed a lot of famous stories, myths and fables, and he realised that if you simplify them down enough, they actually all follow almost the exact same plot structure. 

“There's some sort of call to adventure, where the protagonist either refuses the call or maybe something external keeps them from answering that call. And they always meet a mentor who always gives them some sort of knowledge or courage to set off. And there are all these plot points that the hero's journey follows.

“So part of why the record took so long is because I started exploring that, and then about halfway through it I said to my wife ‘this ended up being a lot more ambitious than I really set out to do’. And she was like, ‘Yeah, you picked, like, every story ever!’”

That unravelling of the album’s inspiration and purpose speaks a lot to Ramsay’s dedication to infusing relatable scenarios and pieces of himself into each song across the MT catalogue, and most likely why the band’s followers have been unrelenting in their support since the early days. With such anticipation for Haven after their previous Phantoms in 2019, does Ramsay feel that weight of expectation grow with each release?

“That's a great question. I think each of them feels a little bit different to me. It's always interesting when I look back on each album; they’re like a scrapbook of my life. There's definitely a lot of my life over the last two years on this record, and in terms of anticipation for it coming out and how I feel about it, it's sort of like a much bigger version of that first day of school.

“I mean, it's a scary thing to create something, and it's one thing when it's just for yourself, and you're creating just for the sake of creating. But as soon as it flips and becomes something that other people are going to listen to, that’s when I really start thinking about it. 

“Sometimes it's hard to not let outside opinions affect what you're going to do. But I try to shut all that stuff off and write the record that I need to write at the time. 

“I think you have to make a choice when you're a new artist. That slightly idealistic and maybe naive way of looking at it, like ‘I won't compromise anything for my art’. That's a commercial choice. Realistically, as soon as you're releasing music professionally and hoping to make your living from doing that, you are joining the music business. So you are going to make some choices. If you don't, sometimes for the artists who didn't compromise anything, no one paid attention. And now they’re angry and jaded about it.” 

They’re sage words from someone who has had the career that Ramsay has had. With Marianas Trench’s latest 13 tracks of unabashed pop punk, melodic glam rock and moody ballads ready to be unleased, the frontman looks forward to hitting the road across the US. He even hints at another tour of Australia in 2025 off the back of Haven’s impending release. In the meantime, Ramsay doesn’t foresee any shortage of future MT albums to come or any halts on his seemingly boundless creativity, but he is open about something that does keep him up at night.

“There’s a songwriter that I love and that I really look up to, a lovely Canadian man named Jim Vallance who co-wrote a bunch of the big Bryan Adams songs and others; when I was young and starting out, I asked him if he would do a co-writing session with me because I wanted to learn from him. And he said, ‘I don't have any songs left’. And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’. And in a very honest and not even in a sad way, he was just like ‘There's only a finite amount of songs that you're going to write’. And to me, I was like, ‘Oh my God’. 

“So that happens to be one of my greatest personal fears, that it will all just dry up for me one day.

“I hope that that's not the case. But what I do take away from that is, if whatever song I’m working on is the last song I'm ever going to write, I'm going to give it everything I have every time. And I do approach every song like that.”

Haven is out now via 604 Records. You can check out the album here.