Vice Magazine has published a story on one local politico who was reminded of his past as a teenage musician in an unusual way – in the form of a prize-winning photograph of a soldier wounded in a Iraq.

An war image by photographer Laura Rauch of a wounded soldier being MedEvac-ed out of an Iraqi combat zone, who won an SPJ Award as a result, contained the now-famous phrase:

“For Those I Love, I Will Sacrifice.”

Words tattooed on a young Iraq War veteran, which were apparently taken from the lyrics to Hallowed Be Thy Name, a song Justin Brannan wrote when he was 16. He was fronting for NYC hardcore band Indecision at the time.

The teenage years are often a rebellious time in someone’s life, and for Brannan – who currently serves as president of the Bay Ridge Democrats, as well as a staffer for Councilman Vincent Gentile, they were no different.

“I wrote those lyrics when I was sixteen years old,” Brannan recently told Vice’s Benjamin Shapiro.  “I think I’ve figured some things out since then. That said, part of belief in anything is being critical.”

The song, which makes reference to Stockholm Syndrome and sacrificing for people “I’ve never seen” might very well echo the thoughts of a soldier trapped in a war zone and forced to deal with the everyday horrors of war in the name of relatively abstract concepts such as freedom, as well the lives of strangers – both home and in country.