The Unseen

I really wans’t sure what to expect when I called up the lead singer of The Unseen to meet up with him for an interview, but to hear him say “I’m in Starbucks, do you want to just do it here?” was certainly not what I expected. So I found the the Starbucks, saw the Mohawkred vocalist and sat down with him for a few minutes as he was kind enough to answer some questions about touring, the new album, the Rolling Stones and Good Charlotte. It was agood interview, although, I will say that I was surprised to hear that the political punk band had never even heard of the capital of Canada before…

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Bobby: First off, you guys have been on this Canadian tour for a few weeks so far, how’s that going?

Mark: So far it’s been going great; especially for our first time up here. Ottawa was really, really good. Montreal, Toronto were great. Most of the shows were really good. There’s only been one disappointment, I’m trying to remember what city it was, jeez, I can’t even remember it of the top of my head. We thought it was going to be a really good show, but it turned out there was only 50 or 60 kids there. Other than that, all the shows have been great. Like tonight, I guess there’s already like 80 tickets pre-sold, so it should be a good crowd tonight.

Bobby: Has there been just like one really memorable moment from the tour so far? Or just like Toronto, Montreal being good shows?

Mark: I would just say playing Ottawa. Like we weren’t expecting much because we had never heard of Ottawa, and it was an amazing show – it was great. It was packed, the kids knew all the songs, and it was great. So I would say the highlight would be Ottawa. We went camping one night because we had a day off, just in the middle of nowhere. That was pretty fun too. We got drunk, lit a fire and just sat in the woods.

Bobby: Very nice, very nice. After this tour you guys are doing five dates with Rancid, are you excited for that?

Mark: Yeah, it should be fun. We played with them before, but it was during the Warped Tour. So this should be a lot more intimate, you know, you’re not outside, we’ll probably get to hang out with them a little more. We’re just looking forward to it, it should be a good time.

Bobby: After that, in September, you guys are touring Australia and New Zealand. Does all this constant touring ever take its toll on you? Like I know in 2004 you did 193 shows.

Mark: Yeah, it does take its toll on you sometimes. It’s a long time to be away, but we love doing it just to see what happens. And it’s the only way to make money; we don’t have jobs, so this is the only way to make money. Sometimes we make money, sometimes we don’t. But we get beat sometimes, some nights you’re just like “man, I wish I was at home in bed, this sucks.” Like sleeping in the truck at a truck stop or in a hotel room with six other people crammed into one hotel room – it gets to you sometimes. But we all like doing it, that’s why we continue to do it.

Bobby: Back in May, you guys said that you’d spend a lot of June and August writing a new record, did you start writing it in June?

Mark: Yes, we have about eight or nine songs done, and then in August we’re going to hopefully write at least two more and then after Australia, that’s when we’ll kind of finish writing. Then hopefully record in December.

Bobby: So you said you were gonna record it in December, when do you think we’re gonna see a release?

Mark: I think you’ll see the release May or June; yeah, probably June. Because once you record it, you still have to come up with the artwork, it just takes forever. So I would say June; May or June.

Bobby: Like you said you’ve already written eight or nine songs for the album, what would you say are some of the lyrical themes of the album?

Mark: Let me think… There’s one song called “Point Break” which is just basically, kind of, in a way, about me growing up. Some stuff that I saw, but just about things in general, like growing up in a dysfunctional family – that’s one of the songs. Another song is “Blessed the Dead” which is just kind of like a song about what’s going on in the Middle East, what’s going on in the world, current topics. It talks a little bit about the hurricane that happened, Hurricane Katrina; just about war. I’m trying to think about what else, off the top of my head. There’s another song called “No Direction” which is kind of about being in a band, and being on tour for so long and just what you go through. I try to not make it like a generic song about like “hey we’re on tour” or something, but it’s basically just about living out of a trunk for nine months.

Bobby: On your last album, State Of Discontent, you had many guest appearances from the likes of Lars Frederiksen, Ken Casey, and Dicky Barret. Do you think you’re gonna have any guest singers or appearances on this one?

Mark: I don’t know, if any cool ideas come up, then yeah. I have one idea, I don’t want to say who it is because I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not, but there’s one song I would like to get somebody to come in and sing. And it’s someone not really from a punk band, but someone from more of a hardcore / metal band. I just think his voice would sound really good on the song. But you never know, like on the last record, Ken was just in the studio with us, so it made sense to have him sing on it. Lars was coming to town with The Bastards, so I called him up and asked if he wanted to sing on it since he was going to be in town anyway – so that’s how that happened. If I think of something that would sound good with somebody, then yeah, I would ask them to come in. There’s a lot of people that I admire and would like to have do something on the record.

Bobby: On State Of Discontent, you also had a cover of the 1966 Rolling Stones track “Paint It Black” – why did you decide to cover that track?

Mark: It’s something that we had been doing for a while at practice as a joke almost. And we were playing it one day and Ken Casey was there, we were sharing the stage with the Dropkick Murphys, and he said “you guys should put that on the record;” and we were like “eh, nah”. Because other bands have covered it; Earthquake just covered it, The Avengers covered it, a couple other bands I know. We just kept playing it and he said “well, when you record, record it. And if you like it, use it; if you don’t, then just throw it in the trash.” So we said “okay, sure, let’s try it” and we did it. In the end, we all liked it and it kind of fit in with the rest of the songs, lyrically, so we just went ahead and used it.

Bobby: Like you just said, a lot fo bands have covered that track. Gob has, Last Regrets have covered it, why do you think a lot of bands decide to cover “Paint It Black?”

Mark: I don’t know. I mean, it’s a classic song and I think a lot of people can relate to the lyrics – it’s kind of like a dark song lyrically. I would just say because of that, because it’s a good song. I guess a lot of people, whether they admit it not, like the Rolling Stones. I actually don’t. I wouldn’t be afraid to admit it, I’m not really a big fan but I’ve always thought that was a great song.

Bobby: Before “State Of Discontent”, you guys were on Better Youth Organization, why did you decide to make the jump from BYO to HellCat?

Mark: Basically, we did two records with BYO and we felt like we hit a ceiling and we weren’t really going to have any exposure or have any chance of getting bigger because we were the biggest band on the label – and that’s not saying much because we weren’t really that big of a band. But we just thought “hey, you know what? Maybe if we go to a bigger label we’ll have better distribution in places like Canada, Japan, Europe” – those were all places that were hard to get our older records. Then there would hopefully be bands on other labels that are a lot bigger than us that would hopefully bring us out on tour, because that helps. That’s how you grow as a band, you tour with a band bigger than you and you play to their audience and on BYO it was like we were it, we were the biggest band. So when we started to talk to other labels, we were looking at HellCat which is a part of Epitaph and we were like “hey, if we’re on this label, there’s a chance that we could tour with bands like Tiger Army, or Rancid, Agnostic Front, Dropkick Murphys, Bad Religion, NOFX.” There’s just so many more chances for us to get on other tours. So it was basically just to get on more tours and to get our records available in other stores. Because we tour so much, we want as many people as possible to find out about the band. We wouldn’t tour around the world for like the past five years if we only wanted to play for like a hundred kids in every city we go to. So it was just to gain exposure.

Bobby: Before BYO you were also on A-F before Pat Thetic told you to move on and go to a bigger label. You’ve also released CDs on labels like VML, Punkcore and more. Is there a big difference, other than the distribution, between the labels you’ve been on?

Mark: In some labels, yeah, definitely. There’s a world of difference between being on even Punkcore Records and BYO Records. It’s just like certain labels are just structured better and know more about what they’re doing, have a bigger staff; there’s just so many things that come into play. When we moved from A-F Records to BYO, it was a huge change. There’s somebody that helps get you interviews, there’s somebody that makes sure to mail posters out of your band so that when you play a town there might be posters of it hanging up at the walls of train station or at the club, whereas a label like VML doesn’t do stuff like that. It’s a huge difference. Between Epitaph and BYO there’s a huge difference. I think BYO has like four employees, and they have four great employees, it’s a great, great label. But then Epitaph and HellCat have like twelve or thirteen employees. There’s just more people to make sure that more things get done. There’s definitely a difference. I mean, there are some smaller labels that are great. Like if we had stayed on BYO, I wouldn’t have changed a thing, it’s a great label. But we had a chance to try something else, so it was like “let’s try it.”

Bobby: I was reading an interview with you where you said that Benji from Good Charlotte was a huge fan of you guys. And on Warped Tour he came up and said “I’m such a huge fan, I can’t wait to see you guys live.” Is it ever weird thinking that these big bands are fans of you guys?

Mark: Yeah, kind of. I mean, especially, that because that was like, jeez, that was about four years ago at this point, and we were a lot smaller band back then and that was when Good Charlotte was on top of the world –like them or hate them. I wasn’t really ever a fan of their band; still they were one of the biggest acts in the world and to have someone like that say “oh, I really like your band.” It was just really weird, like “how the hell did that happen? Like how did they find out?” So yeah, it’s strange. Even having someone from like Rancid say they like your band its like “wow.” I never thought something like that would happen.

Bobby: You guys have been around since the mid-nineties. Of course, a lot of things have changed in the past decade, how do you think the music scene and the punk scene have changed in the last five, ten years?

Mark: I think it’s gotten a lot more mainstream whether that’s good or bad. Some people say “I hate the fact that it’s more mainstream,” “I love the fact that it’s more mainstream.” It’s just available everywhere now. I haven’t even been into punk for what I consider that long. I’ve been listening to it for twelve, thirteen years now and there’s people that have been listening to it for ten years before me. It just seems to be more and more available everywhere you go. Like you can go to Best Buy and buy a Clash CD, it’s crazy. Or you can go to the mall and get your face pierced or buy green hair dye. It’s just lost its shock value I think. I mean, back the mid-eighties, the guys from like Youth Brigade and Bad Religion tell me stories like “yeah, we used to walk around town and the construction workers would beat us up. They’d call us faggots and beat us up because of the way we looked.” And that doesn’t really happen, and if it does, it’s very rare anymore just because it’s so acceptable. It’s like it’s almost cool to be different. I think it just evolved a lot more into the mainstream.

Bobby: Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay, I love going to concerts, I try to go to as many as possible. I know I have a set of eight I plan to go to in the next twelve days. So thinking back, what are some concerts that you went to that are really memorable for you?

Mark: Umm… There’s a bunch. The Casualties and All Is Rotten… The Casualties, All Is Rotten and The Cursed in New York City and this was when I first got into punk, I was probably like sixteen or something. I took the bus, it was like a six hour trip, me and Scott and Tripp from The Unseen took a bus up to New York to see it. And it was just really memorable because we all really liked those bands at that time and it was packed into this small room and eventually we ended up becoming really good friends with all three bands. So that was always a memorable experience. Other concerts I’ve been to… I’ve seen Slayer twice. Not punk at all, but both of those shows were amazing. The Cult, I’ve seen The Cult once and that was really, really memorable for me because I’ve liked that band since I was growing up, even before I was into punk rock. The first time I got to see The Exploited, that was probably like eight years ago, that was really memorable for me because Exploited are one of my favorite bands. Let’s see, one more… I would say Plane of Conflicts. Actually, first we saw them and the next day we played with them, so seeing that was really memorable. That was probably like nine years ago.

Bobby: Now onto a bit more unusual questions that I just like to ask at all my interviews just to end things off. First off, if you guys were stranded on a desert island, no food, and nothing to eat, which one of the band members would you eat to survive and why?

Mark: Umm… I have no idea how to answer that question… I’d eat Scott because he drinks a lot so I’d probably catch a buzz. So if I was stranded on a desert island, it would give me something to do for a while.

Bobby: Now, if you were the member of the opposite sex for a day, week, month, however long you wanted. What would you do and why?

Mark: I’d go to the bathroom with a bunch of other girls to see what they do in there because they always go to the bathroom in groups.

Bobby: Could you tell us something about the band or one of its members that not many people know about? Like a little quirk they do on the road or something like that?

Mark: Something about the band that not many people know… I don’t know… I’m trying to think. Our bass player, Tripp, he writes a lot. He’s trying to get into writing, I don’t know if many people know that. He’s writing a book right now, that’s something about him. There’s not much else, I mean, we’re not really that exciting people. I’m a pretty boring person at home; some people might not know that. Some people may be like “oh, he sings in a band” and some people may think the band is popular and may be like “oh, he lives a crazy lifestyle.” But the truth is, when I’m at home I just lay around with my girlfriend and watch “X-Files” or “Six Feet Under,’ I just sit at home and pretty much just space over and relax. Because when we’re gone, we’re pretty much just driving around staying up all night. So I guess I lead a pretty boring lifestyle, that may surprise some people, or it might not.

Bobby: Okay, if you could have one thing at this moment, anything at all, what would you have and why?

Mark: I think just a tour bus. Because touring two, three months at time really gets to you. And if you had a bus, it wouldn’t really matter because you’d always have a bed to stay in and it would be of somewhat comfort. But it would look really stupid pulling up to a club to play in front of a hundred kids in a bus; but hey, this is imaginary right? So…

Bobby: So I guess that’s about it. Thanks a lot for doing it, do you have any final thoughts you’d like to add?

Mark: Nah, I think that’s it. Check out our website, unseenpunks.com. We have a myspace page, I don’t know the address though. But you can go there and check out our tours, music, watch our videos, and get info on the band, stuff like that.

Bobby: Okay, thanks a lot.

Mark: Thank you.