This interview with The Unseen was done on November 21, 2003 in Tampa, Florida and appears in issue number 11 of Sink Hole.
I’m gonna assume that every one who is reading this is well aware of who the Unseen are. These Boston punx have been making music and starting riots for about a decade now. They’ve been on a ridiculous amount of comps and have 4 full-length Lps under thier belts, most recently “Explode” on BYO Records. They’ve been on tour non stop almost all year and I caught up with founding member, former drummer and current singer, Mark Unseen after their set while doing the Vans Off The Wall Mini-Warped Club Tour with Suicide Machines and Western Waste.
Sink Hole Zine: I guess the first thing I wanted to ask about was the line-up, it’s always impressed me that you guys had been able to maintain the same line-up, more or less, from the first album on, but tonight the group was a little different. What happened to Paul and who’s in the band now?
Mark Unseen: Paul’s played on every album we’ve done, he’s been in the band pretty much the entire time that we’ve been around. He left the band after our first album for a little while because he wasn’t really into it, but he came back, and then the last year and a half or two years he’s just been less and less interested in the band. He’s really not into the style of music that we play anymore. It really showed when we went to do our new album, he wasn’t showing up for practice and he didn’t really contribute to the new album at all. We were pretty bummed, but we went along with it to finish the record. We brought Pat in, the guy who’s playing drums with us now, he joined the band while Paul was still in the band. He basically came in because Paul didn’t want to play drums anymore, he used to play drums for half the set, and he wasn’t into that anymore. We brought Pat in to make things a little easier for Paul, but that didn’t really help much either, so we just figured that we were probably just better off going on without him. Especially after the deal with the record, because we all worked real hard on it and he didn’t really do anything. He wrote lyrics for one song, and he sang it, the song “Tsunami Suicide”. He didn’t even write the music, Scott wrote that. I think the only reason why he even wrote that one song is cuz when we went to record we all had done a bunch of stuff, he didn’t have anything, so he felt like an idiot and wrote that song.
SHZ: So is he done with The Unseen?
Unseen: Yeah, he’s done with the band. He’s living in Salt Lake City now.
SHZ: Is the new line-up permanent with Pat on drums?
Unseen: Yeah, it’s permanent, and we also have a second guitar player, too. We had basically been having friends help us out till we could find someone long-term. I think we have found our guy, he was out on this tour with us, but he left 4 days ago because he’s getting married. We knew all along that he would have to leave for a while, get married, take a honeymoon. It’s cool, he’s been seeing this girl for years. I think he’s gonna be the guy for us when he gets back. He says his girl is cool with all the touring, he’s gonna make sure it’s good with her before he commits, but I think he will.
SHZ: So, who is he and where did you hook up with him?
Unseen: His name is Ian, he’s been into punk and hardcore for years, basically as long as Scott and Tripp and I have. He was in this band called The Degenerates, which is like a local band from Rhode Island, which is only like an hour away from Boston. I’ve known him for years, but hadn’t seen him in a while, we thought of him one day, asked him and he was psyched. He learned the songs real quick, he can sing, he can write songs, we’re really excited about it.
SHZ: Does it bum you out not playing drums anymore?
Unseen: Kind of, I like it honestly, it’s a lot of fun and it’s a really good workout, too. I’m kind of bummed out, but I guess it’s probably better and easier for the most part for the band to have a front man. I guess it’s just easier this way, than for me to say “All right Pat, get away from the drum set for these two songs that Tripp is gonna sing”. Pat’s a great drummer, so we’re gonna let him drum for the whole set.
SHZ: So, I heard you hate Florida? What’s up yankee?
Unseen: Usually when we come here it’s fucking hot and muggy and usually the turnouts aren’t that good. Tonight was awesome, we’ll definitely come back here, this was great. We came to Florida a couple months back with The Forgotten and we played 5 shows, I think 2 of the 5 shows were good, the other 3 sucked.
SHZ: Well you guys didn’t come to Tampa, you hit the top of the state and then the bottom, you forgot about the middle...
Unseen: We didn’t stop here, this place is fucking great, this is the best Florida show we’ve had in years.
SHZ: So how is this tour working out, I guess the idea is that it’s like a mini-Warped Tour, but in small clubs. Four pretty different bands, corporate sponsors, high-ticket prices...
Unseen: It definitely needs to have the kinks worked out of it. Tonight was one of the best nights of the tour. I think there’s some problems with promoters and promotion, the door prices and all. A lot of our fans who want to support us and see us, a lot of them aren’t really fans of these other bands, so for them to pay like $15.00 just to see one band is pretty crazy, I wouldn’t do it.
SHZ: Would you call it a success, this tour, especially with Avenged Sevenfold dropping off so it’s only a 3 band tour now?
Unseen: It’s good for us...We’re getting good crowds, selling merch and meeting new people, so it’s a success for us.
SHZ: On the new album, there’s a song called “So Sick Of You” which seems to be aimed at shit talkers and especially people who like to talk shit about you guys for playing the Warped Tour. What do you say when people give you shit for that or call you sellouts or whatever?
Unseen: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, so whatever, but obviously it’s something I feel strongly about cuz I wrote a song about it, ya know? We’ve been in this band for ten years now, we’ve toured Japan, Europe, the U.S. time and time again, but especially now that we’re getting older, if we want to continue to be a band, we have to make some progressions. Its like, yeah we did Warped Tour, but we didn’t fucking change our style to do it. We’re still the same band. Warped can be really good for bands, especially when it hits places in the middle of nowhere like Idaho or North Dakota. If we went there on our own we couldn’t draw 30 kids, but with Warped Tour, your gonna get the chance to play for like a hundred kids or maybe a thousand. If those extra hundred or thousand kids get into your band, hopefully they find out what punk is, then they get into other bands like Crass, Conflict, Discharge, The Misfits, whatever... It helps bring people into punk, it helps kids in the middle of nowhere who normally don’t get tours to find out about so many great bands, I’m all for it as long as your band stays the same and you do it while still sticking to your ideals. I think it would be pretty lame if you changed everything you were about just to do it, but... To answer your question, we almost never get any slack to our faces, so I don’t really get to say anything. It’s normally shit that people talk behind our backs and it’s basically just people saying we sold out, it doesn’t matter...
SHZ: The new album, “Explode”, that’s the perfect name for it, it’s so frustrated lyrically, so on the breaking point, so much fury...
Unseen: Yeah, I think that “Explode” is probably our angriest record so far, probably the heaviest and definitely the most personal record we’ve written. It’s our 4th full-length, now our 1st two had a lot of political songs on them, as well as personal songs. I guess the 1st had “Too Young To Know” and “Alone” that are very personal songs and the 2nd had “Dead And Gone” which is personal as well. Anyway, when we got to recording “The Anger And The Truth” we said to ourselves, we’ve been a band for 7 years and we still believe in all the same stuff, but do we really want to write another song about how the cops suck and America sucks and the government sucks? We just tried to evolve and write some different stuff. Anyway, by the time we got to writing “Explode”, like I said Paul didn’t do much writing, so me and Tripp did most of the writing and I was going through a lot of shit at the time and I wrote about how I felt personally about people and society in general. “So Sick Of You” came from hearing secondhand that so many people thought I was a sellout. “Explode” (the song” is a song about being really pissed off and losing your mind and not being able to deal with it. Tripp wrote some great songs, too. “Useless Regrets”, “Don’t Look Back” is a really personal song about dealing with things. We’re all in our mid to late twenties now, we have bills to pay, no money and we’re dealing with all that. We’re dealing with decisions like “do we want to try and be a real band full time, or do we want work jobs or to get jobs?”. Ya know its really hard to balance both, but ya still need money to live. I’m lucky because my girlfriend gets to come on the road with us because she sells merchandise for us, but we’ll be gone on the road for a month, 3 months, whatever, and Paul and Tripp don’t get to see their girlfriends at all. That’s just all shit that didn’t mean as much before, but you deal with it as you get older and it all comes out in the new album.
SHZ: Work sucks! I wasn’t supposed to work today, but last minute ended up having to work all day long. I got in the car and sped to the club and just barely made your set. I work two jobs and HATE it. Do you guys still work, and what do you do?
Unseen: We decided last March that we were gonna tour full-time and we’ve been on the road since, before that we all worked. We had to, we couldn’t afford to live without working full-time. Once we stop touring, eventually we will have to stop touring for at least a few months, then we’ll all get jobs again. I do landscaping, I mow lawns and trim trees and shit. My brother owns a landscaping company, so That’s great for me. I can leave and come back, so I always have a job basically. I get paid really good money and its under the table...
SHZ: Did I mention that I work for the IRS? What do the other guys do?
Unseen: Tripp is a teacher actually. He has a teaching degree. It’s hard for him to tour because he can stay home and teach and make good money and all that...Its really cool that he’s a teacher, because most teachers are assholes and it’s cool for his kids to be taught by someone who understands kids and understands what its like to be an outsider. Scott worked in a liquor store before we hit the road.
SHZ: Back to the new album...It’s good, but the one thing it could really use is a Poison cover. I heard some people calling for it tonight, but you didn’t oblige, will you still play it and are there any covers your working on?
Unseen: We still will pull out “Every Rose” once in a while, we play “Beat It” (from “So This Is Freedom?”) sometimes, too. With all the new Michael Jackson shit going on we are thinking of bringing “Beat It” back, just for laughs. When we recorded the first album we were gonna do “18 And Life” by Skid Row, but we couldn’t pull it off. We recorded all the music and still have it on tape somewhere, but when we went to do the vocals we just couldn’t do it. You never know, maybe for the next record we’ll pull something really stupid out.
SHZ: You know every time I listen to “Too Young To Know, Too Reckless To Care”, it makes me want to be a better father. I’m pretty sure that’s not the reaction that you were going for, did you get stories like that from people a lot where they were affected by your music, but really not in the way you intended?
Unseen: That’s great man that it does that for you. I’ve gotten a lot of responses from certain songs that I never expected to. I don’t really write a song to get a reaction, but “Too Young To Know” is a very personal song. It’s about my step-father, I say that because my real father is great and he and I have a good relationship, but my parents got divorced when I was young, so I had a step-father. He was pretty cool to me growing up. I lived with him for like 8 or 9 years. Anyway, my Mom and him had some more kids. I have two brothers and a sister. Well, they ended up getting a divorce and as soon as they got a divorce, he totally abandoned his kids and me. To me it wasn’t such a big deal, because for me, I still had my real father, my biological father, plus I was a teenager, so I was a lot older than my brothers and sister. My sister was 2 or 3, and my brothers were like 5 and 7 so it really fucked with them growing up and stuff. It fucked with me, too, especially seeing them going through what they had to go through, and that’s what that song is about. I’ve had a lot of kids come up to me, even guys who I’ve become friends with and stuff who are like 4 or 5 years younger than me from Boston, this one kid who I’m friends with said “that song really means a lot to me cuz my father ditched out on us and moved to Georgia and I haven’t seen him in like 8 years and whenever I hear that song it means a lot to me and helps me get through a tough time and know Im not alone.” So, its really cool, like I said, I never intended stuff like that when I wrote it, but that song seems to mean something to a lot of people for different reasons.
SHZ: So what about Boston, is it still home and how is it these days?
Unseen: I have honestly only been home in Boston for like 3 weeks since March. That’s total, not 3 weeks here and 3 weeks there, but 3 weeks total time in Boston in the past 8-months. We did a tour with Hatebreed, then the Forgotten, then on our own, then it was Warped Tour, then another tour with Dropkick Murphys, right after that we started this tour and we wont be home till December 14th. Even before we started on the road we were spending every day writing and recording the new album, so I honestly couldn’t tell you what the hell is going on in Boston right now.
SHZ: You guys have had the chance to meet and play with so many legendary bands over the years, I think of the first times that I’ve been able to meet guys who I used to look up to as a kid and how amazing it was for me to talk to people like Roger Miret and stuff, is there any awe for you when you meet these people that you listened to as a kid and now your sharing shows with them and hanging out?
Unseen: I’ve gotten used to it a little bit, I guess I’m a little desensitized now, but it used to be a huge deal all the time.
SHZ: When was the first time it struck, the awe-like what band or person really shocked you that you were on the same level with them?
Unseen: I’ve always been such a huge fan of music...I remember the first time we did a show with the Casualties and it was like “holy shit, we’re playing with the Casualties!”. That was cool. Then there was Conflict. We played with Conflict and I met their singer and he was really cool. There’s also been bands, and I won’t name names, but bands that really disappointed me, real assholes that I always thought would be cool. One of the last big deals for me was, and funny you mentioned Roger Miret, but playing with Agnostic Front this past March. That’s a band that I’ve loved for years and years and years and they turned out to be the coolest guys. Roger is so fucking awesome. He watched us every night, and even said he thought we were an awesome band, and to hear that from Roger Miret is pretty fucking special, I mean holy fuck, that meant a lot. We just met the Sick Of It All guys which was cool. Also, we’ve gotten to meet Lars and Matt and Tim from Rancid over the years. That was a huge deal and now we kinda work with them in a way cuz we go through Machete Manufacturing and That’s pretty much owned by all the guys in Rancid. Lars and Tim and Matt and Brett, it’s their company, so its weird cuz we’re almost in business with them, so it’s strange. At this point the only guys that would still leave me starstruck would be if I got to meet Mike Ness or Glenn Danzig. I did get to meet Wattie a couple of years ago and that was a big deal. It was at Holidays In The Sun, it was the last day and I was like, I really wanted to get my picture taken with him and I’d waited all week, so I went up to him and he was really cool. He was also blasted out of his mind on speed, so I know he doesn’t remember it, but it was still cool. I mean, I’m really lucky to get to meet so many guys in these bands that I really loved so much growing up.
SHZ: What point, person or record opened you up to the punk rock scene, what did you first here, or who did you meet that guided this way?
Unseen: There was a kid in my neighborhood who was a few years older than me and he was into Slapshot, Minor Threat, Cro Mags and the Misfits and I was around it for like a year or two and I didn’t really catch on to it. I thought it was all right, but I was really into metal. Then one day I heard Misfits “Walk Among Us” and I was like wow this is fucking awesome. From there it went on to the Sex Pistols and The Clash and then from there I got into the more underground bands.
SHZ: How did you guys end up on BYO Records, are you happy there and do you still keep a relationship with the labels that you’ve worked with in the past?
Unseen: We still keep a relationship with all the Anti-Flag guys and Punk Core Records who we did the “Singles Collection” with, so yeah we are on good terms with all those guys. As far as BYO Records goes...after we did the “So This Is Freedom?” album the Anti-Flag guys told us basically that they thought we should find another label. It was pretty much cuz they said they thought we deserved more than they could give us because they’re a small label and they’re always on tour, etc., etc. We started thinking about labels and we weren’t really going anywhere, then one day we were playing in California and the Stern Brothers came to one of our shows. They said “hey, we like you guys and we’d like to sign you”. We were like, FUCK! Man, this is Youth Brigade! Yeah, back to that question before about meeting amazing people from bands you grew up with, that was awesome. We’re sitting there hanging out with the Stern brothers, the guys from “Another State Of Mind”, that was cool as hell. Basically, after that we just talked to them about releasing something, they seemed real interested, we kept in touch and then the next time we played California, they came out again. They seemed like they could help us out, and they have, we’re thrilled.
SHZ: How about the line-up on BYO right now? You guys, Pistol Grip, The Forgotten, Youth Brigade...all those bands. Is there another label out there in this kind of music that has a line-up close to that good?
Unseen: I don’t really think so honestly. Side One Dummy has some great bands like The Casualties, Flogging Molly, The Suicide Machines. There’s always Epitaph, but yeah BYO has some great fucking bands. There are a lot of bands that I dig so much. Pistol Grip is fucking amazing, I listen to their records like at least twice a week, I’ll be driving and pop it in.
SHZ: They’re big Poison fans, too.
Unseen: All right!
SHZ: So, I remember reading an interview with you a while back and you said that you’d never smoked, got drunk or done drugs ever, is that the case?
Unseen: Yeah, that was the Suburban Voice interview. It was true at the time. I’ve never called myself a straight-edge, but I never got intoxicated until I was about 24 or 25. I still don’t drink much at all and I’ve never done drugs. Basically, I got to my mid-twenties and I hadn’t been drunk or high and I was kinda curious as to what it was like. I have a history of drug and alcohol abuse in my family and I think that’s why I never tried it growing up, but one day I decided I would try drinking for the hell of it, just to see what it was like. I’ve been on this particular tour for 5 weeks and I’ve got drunk once. I really don’t drink often, cuz I don’t really like it. I hate waking up the next day and feeling sick, but to answer your question, it was true when I said it back then, but not anymore. People still ask me about that all the time.
SHZ: I guess they had a pretty decent circulation.
SHZ: Tattoos...I’ve been seeing a lot of Unseen tattoos out and about lately. How does that make you feel seeing them, is it cool or is it creepy?
Unseen: It’s really crazy, it’s really cool and I guess it’s kind of creepy in a way, too. I started seeing kids come to shows with them about 4 or 5 years ago, they’d come up and show us and we’d be like “wow”. I used to take pictures of them and stuff, it was really amazing. Lately we’ve seen a lot of tattoos of the spider from our 3rd album. It’s cool. I feel cheezy, I still don’t have an Unseen tattoo, all these kids beat me to it.
SHZ: Is that a “Horror Business” tattoo I see peaking out?
Unseen: Yeah, and a Samhain one, there.
SHZ: Are those the only bands your representin’?
Unseen: No, on this arm I have one from the movie Halloween, I love horror movies. I’d have more, but I can’t afford it.
SHZ: Okay, I also wanted to ask about Japan, y’all are bigger than Godzilla over there. How did you get such a big following over there and what makes it so special that it keeps you going back there?
Unseen: Japan is really cool because the people in Japan are really respectful. There’s no crime rate there, you can really trust people there. People there treat each other with so much more respect than people treat each other in America. Everyone treats each other like that. It’s like, people will ride their bikes to the store, they leave their bike outside with no lock or chain and come out and it’s still there, you can’t do that shit in America, your bike would be gone in a second. There’s no murder rate there either. The guys who were taking us around last time were telling us there’s been like 2 murders in the past 4 years. It’s crazy, there’s no crime. I guess it’s just the way they’re raised or whatever, but it seems so much nicer and it’s so cool to play there and they’re really appreciative.
SHZ: What about the language gap, is that an issue, or do you speak Japanese?
Unseen: No, I don’t speak Japanese. The language gap is definitely hard, it’ll drive you fucking crazy. It can be completely impossible to communicate with people sometimes over there, really we only actually talked to the guys in bands who spoke English. The Japanese kids would always want to hang out with us after the shows and shit, and we would hang out with them, but we couldn’t really talk to each other, it was fucking weird. We were there for almost a month and that’s a long time when you don’t know the language. Even eating was impossible...I had to eat at McDonalds all the time because they had pictures on their menu. The first week and a half we were there, I was afraid to go anywhere by myself cuz I couldn’t read any signs. I mean if I get lost, I can’t read a sign, I can’t ask someone for directions cuz they’re not gonna understand what the hell I’m saying. I felt like worthless cuz I couldn’t do anything for myself. Say if I did get lost, how do I find out where I’m going? If I go up to someone and speak English, I might as well just say blalahlalala cuz that’s what its gonna sound like to them.
SHZ: I guess you guys stand out quite a bit over here, how much of a sore thumb were you in Japan?
Unseen: We stuck out a lot, there really weren’t any white people at all that we saw, so we were sore fucking thumbs, but it was still great.
SHZ: So, you mentioned earlier that you might have some new releases coming out soon, what’s on tap?
Unseen: We’re gonna start to write another album which will probably be out in another year. Also, we’re gonna try and put out a single. I’m not sure yet, but I think we’re gonna be putting out a single with the guys from Rancid. Not Hellcat, but they have a new label called Rancid Records. It’s basically run through Machete (www.machetemfg.com). They’re starting to do a series of 12 inch singles. We’ll probably do it with them, but if it doesn’t work out, we’ll just put it out ourselves as a 7 inch cuz it’s been a few years since we’ve had a 7 inch.
SHZ: I can tie this here interview up if you want, unless there’s anything else you want to say...
Unseen: I guess I can plug our website, www.unseenpunks.com, and also, we just finished a video for the song “False Hope”. You can watch it by going through www.byorecords.com, it’s free. It came out really well, it’s like a real professional video. Our friend Ian McFarland (Killswitch Productions), the bass player for Blood For Blood, did it for us. He went to film school and he’s really good, it was cool to have someone who really knows what punk and hardcore is all about do something like that, rather than just some random dude who’s just wanted money. Ian basically did it for free cuz he’s really cool and he likes the band, so people should check that out.
SHZ: Okay, I end every interview by asking....Oh, wait! I interviewed you like 3 years ago when you started Self Destruct with Scott Unseen and Mike and Pete from A Global Threat. Is Self Destruct still a band in any shape or form?
Unseen: Yeah, in a small shape and form... Kids ask me every night, and I get e-mails all the time about Self Destruct.
SHZ: You should, that 7 inch you put out was quite a tease...
Unseen: It’s just, we’re always on tour, and if we’re not, it seems that A Global Threat is. It’s hard to get together. We have like 3 songs that are kinda new, I guess we wrote them like a year and a half ago, but we haven’t recorded them yet. BYO is actually willing to put out a full length for us, but we need to come up with some more songs. Hopefully, in another year or so we’ll have a Self Destruct full length out and do some shows.
SHZ: Okay, one more thing, as you know I end every interview asking for 5 words to sum everything up, the meaning of life, or whatever’s on the tip of your tongue. Last time you said “I have no fucking idea” which is no longer acceptable...
Unseen: Uh...Five words to sum it all up...I’m drawing a blank here. How about if you want to try music, don’t quit your day job. I don’t know if That’s five words.
SHZ: That’s like a paragraph, come on...
Unseen: Okay, how about this-I’ll be there for you!!!
SHZ: These five words I swear to you!!!
Unseen: Fucking Bon Jovi bailed me out. That’s how I want to end it, he’s got some kick ass tunes!
SHZ: I would have accepted “every rose has it’s thorn” or “Ricky was a young boy” or maybe “I’m wanted dead or alive”
For more info on the band, check their website, Unseen Punks dot com or their labels BYO Records Dot Com, Punk Core dot com or A-F Records. For Unseen gear, go to Machete Clothing.
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