The Unit Ama Reveal “Observe Yourself” Video

The Unit Ama take their time. They act on their own terms. This applies to their music and their work-rate. Two albums and a handful of singles in twenty years. Sporadic gigs. No endless Bandcamp messages or weekly mailing list updates. Rare missions outside their native north-east. Then they released Toward, their second studio album that was released digitally in May and is available for pre-order on vinyl via Gringo Records. It’s not their ‘pandemic’ album but does see the band considering the important things: post-traumatic growth, insight through experience and utilising the past to navigate towards a meaningful future. 

Toward was self-produced and will probably get tagged as post-hardcore which is fair enough. But it’s also informed by post-punk, jazz and folk, and by working closely together for two decades. The Unit Ama play in other incarnations that inform their music and the way they dismantle expectations of the trio. There’s as much Richard Thompson as Minutemen. The band have now released the video for Observe Yourself, an ominous and heavy track, but one that still manages to crackle with energy and fire and is a perfect illustration of what’s on offer on Toward.

Toward takes the exploratory, explosive sound of their debut and adds twenty years of living and listening. Toward is eight tracks that are thoughtful and intricate without losing any impact. This is gut music as much as it is head music. The Unit Ama never let their abilities get in the way of their instincts and Toward is full of surging urgency and roaring anxiety. But there are moments of brooding calm too, and a song that could be stripped down and sold as a folk ballad.