The Unseen

After starting life as a straight ahead punk band, “The Unseen” in the year 2007 prefers to walk a fine line between hardcore, punk and rock… with a few metallic moments thrown in for good measure.

Vocalist Mark kindly donated some of his “Warped Tour” downtime to speak to us…

Interview w/ Mark (vocals) of

“The Unseen”.

By Cameron Chambers.

Thanks heaps for speaking to

us today mate. 

No problem man, how are you? 

Good thanks man.

today yeah? 

Yep yep. We’re out on Warped

at the moment. 

How was that? 

It was really cool. We played

early, at 11:30am but we had a really big crowd – it was really surprising.

North Carolina isn’t really known for a being a punk mecca, but we

had a really great crowd and played a really great show! 

A lot of other bands have commented

tour? 

Ha ha, well, there’s a lot we

hate about this tour as well, ha ha. At the end of the day, we do it

because there’s a lot of great people involved in it and it lets us

go to places and play for people that we wouldn’t normally get to

play for. 

Using today as an example, we

played for 1000 kids in North Carolina but if we toured here on our

own we’d probably play in a tiny bar to maybe 40 people. Which is

awesome – don’t get me wrong – but at the same time, doing things

like Warped Tour enables us to play to more people, so when we come

back on one of our own tours we might get 100 people at our shows. 

It’s all just a part of the

climbing process you know? Building your band up. 

There’d definitely be a lot

– maybe steal some of Hawthorne Heights fans, ha ha? 

Ha ha, yeah, we’d like to steal

some of Underoath’s fans, ha ha. 

I’m assuming you guys copped

– and I use the term loosely - about taking bigger tours like this? 

Yeah man, we always get shit from

our fans. Being a punk band, people put you on this pedestal – they

want to like you but they don’t want other people to like you.  

We got shit when we did a video.

We got shit when we signed to BYO and then we got even more shit for

signing to Hellcat. But this is the 3^rd Warped Tour that

we’ve done so we’re used to getting bitched at. We haven’t had

too many complaints this time though! 

If anyone does complain, we’re

like, “we did the Warped Tour 3 years ago, where were you”, ha ha! 

Who are some bands that you’re

keen to check out on Warped this year? 

Really looking forward to seeing

Tiger Army, Bad Religion, Throwdown, Parkway Drive – who are from

Australia so I’m assuming you know a lot about them. We’ve actually

been travelling with those guys and getting to know them which has been

cool. 

I’m drawing a blank right now,

there are just so many bands on this tour! Um, Mad Margin, The Stone

Cutters, Left Alone, The Briggs, they’re all great bands so there’s

heaps of people that we’ve got to meet and hang out with. 

The Unseen have been kicking

so far? 

I’d say when we toured Japan

about 6 years ago. We were really young and it was a real DIY tour so

that was cool. Touring in Australia last year as well and I’m not

just saying that because I’m speaking with an Australia! We never

thought we’d get to do something like that and we met so many great

people and play some great shows. 

We got to tour with Rancid through

England last year and that was a blast. We’ve done so many tours man,

but those ones really stand out. 

I read a really great article

these days – anything you’d like to add to that? 

He pretty much covered everything

man, but I definitely agree. Punk is supposed to be about being open

minded and being a community, but some places… the people are so sexist,

saying shit like “girls can’t play guitar” and heaps of racist

comments. 

I think overall we’ve heard

so many ignorant things, like “that guys a loser because he doesn’t

drink”. Stuff like that and it’s shit because that not what punk

is about. 

I’ll be honest man, I’d

but “Internal Salvation” has blown me away.  

Ha ha, that’s cool man. 

When

record! 

Ha ha, that’s awesome, thanks! 

What was the writing process

you hit the studio? 

Well, we never write in the studio,

it’s just a waste of money. I mean, it’s costing us an hour

to be in there, ha ha. 

We write in our practice space

and we always have all our songs demoed before we go to record. This

time round we spent about a year and a half writing this new record.

We’d spend downtime between tours writing and then we’d throw all

the ideas together. 

Some of the songs are a year old,

but the one of the last songs on the record – Step Inside, this short,

fast, hardcore song – was written a week before we hit the studio.

“Right Before Your Eyes” – which is maybe the fourth song –

that was one of the last songs we wrote for the record, which was probably

about a month before we hit the studio. 

Mostly though it’s a slow process

between tours. I spend time writing lyrics, and the other guys write

riffs, but the songs are always changing. It’s not really a new process

for us, we just get together and come up with riffs and go from there. 

I spend a lot of time taking tapes

of our songs home and doing lyrics as well, so we’re usually pretty

prepared.

Your last record (State Of

“Internal Salvation”? 

Hellcat have been so good man,

they just let us down our own thing. There’s no pressure at all. They

didn’t do it with the record either… they’re so cool about that

stuff!!! 

They sign a band because they

believe in them and just say, “if we can help then let us know”.

They pretty much said that when we are ready to do a record to just

go for it. 

We basically said, let’s record

in January, then we’ll aim for a release in June and then hit the

Warped Tour. That was the plan! 

“State Of Discontent” was

fucking great!? 

We did “Internal Salvation”

at the same place we did our last record. Ken helped out in the studio

with our last record which was great – he was able to throw around

a few ideas but I think the reason for the quality of the production

is because of the studio we were using. 

We actually used the same engineer

for our last 2 records and this was one I guess you’d say was self

produced. For better or for worse, ha ha. 

Was this the first album where

you guys have had 2 guitarists? 

Well, we always had 2 guitars

on the record so we didn’t change the amount of guitar tracks that

we did. So this time rather than having one guitarist laying down 4

tracks we had 2 guitarists laying down 2 tracks each. 

Adding Johnny (2^nd

guitarist) has really filled out our sound and added to it. He’s not

a guitar prodigy or anything like that. I mean, he’s really good but

he’s not a musical genius but he definitely brought his feel to this

record.  

Any time you have more people

involved with writing and recording it helps and Johnny’s such a solid

player so he was able to add new perspective to what we had. 

After hearing this new record

– when can we expect you guys back here? 

Ha ha, I would say hopefully in

February or March next year man. We’re talking about getting back

over around that time. 

What else have you guys got

planned for the rest of 2007? 

Right now, not too much. We’ve

got a month off after Warped Tour and then we hit England for 2 weeks.

After that we’re off to Europe for 5 weeks so we’re planning what

to do after that. 

That’s pretty much it man,

anything else you’d like to add? 

Umm, that’s all I can think

of. Thanks for doing this though! 

No problem man,

enjoy the rest of the Warped Tour. 

For more information on “The

Unseen” head to