UnityTX’s first concert in Pittsburgh still stands out to frontman Jay Webster — busting your head open and possibly suffering a concussion are hard to forget after all.
At a 2022 show at Spirit Hall opening for Loathe — and on the tour’s first night, no less — Webster’s iron chain-link mic stand started to fall. The resulting combination of him kicking for it and a fan pushing it meant a painful whack to the head.
“I pretty much hit my eye bone. The blood just started coming out once it swelled up,” Webster recalled. “The craziest thing is I haven’t been hit in the face like that in a long time. So I had to be reminded of what it feels like to feel that. I don’t get hit like that unless I’m skateboarding or moshing or something like that. So to be hit by my own mic stand that I’ve been using since like 2018, 2019, it was kind of a little betrayal, but it’s fine.
“I still got love for that thing,” he added with a laugh.
The metal/hip-hop fusion band returns to Pittsburgh on April 7, opening for Varials, with Heavy//Hitter, Boltcutter and Place Blame also on the bill at Thunderbird Music Hall in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood.
UnityTX rolls into town fresh off the March 13 release of their latest album, “Somewhere, In Between,” a record in which Webster said he aimed for a vibe similar to Code Orange, the Grammy-nominated metalcore band out of Pittsburgh.
In a Zoom conversation from Dallas before the tour started, Webster spoke with TribLive about playing ShipRocked for the first time, Code Orange’s influence, the new album and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
Will this be your first tour of the year then?
Yeah, we did Shiprocked in January. That was really cool. It was great. It was our first time playing ShipRocked in general. So everybody who saw us, they weren’t familiar with Unity. I had a friend, Tyler (Levenson), who played in the band Afterlife, and he’s like a celebrity on there. Everybody was like ‘Tyler, Tyler, Tyler.’ So we’re walking around with Tyler and he’s showing everyone love and everything, saying hello. And he’s introducing them to us. And he’s like, yo, these are my friends. They play in Unity. They play tonight at this time.
We had a lot of people who were coming around to see us based off of that, but then other people were seeing us on the boat and they were like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see you guys. I saw that you were playing this, and I checked out your music and I’m digging it.’ The first night we played, Tyler shows up and then a gang of his people show up. It was kind of crazy, the first show, the guitarist for P.O.D. walks in and we’re like, yo, is that Marcos (Curiel) from P.O.D.? Me and my drummer and my guitarist, we’re all like, yo, dude, this guy right here, he’s shaped our childhood and it’s kind of crazy to see that. But he came up, he showed us some love before the set, dapped us up and everything and then we played. Then after the set, he was like, ‘Man!’ And everybody in the room was like, ‘What the hell, dude, you guys are crazy. We just heard about y’all. How have we not heard about y’all before?’
It was a good feeling having that experience and being told that by complete strangers. A lot of people came up and they were like, you guys are awesome. We’re going to go buy some merch. We’re going to be at your second show and everything. So a lot of people went to go buy T-shirts and stuff. The second show we played, it hit capacity on the boat. We played in the Plaza. So playing in the Plaza and it reaches capacity is kind of crazy. It was stretched all the way down the hallway. They had to cut people off at a certain limit, but in front of us, in front of the stage, the left side to the deck and then the right side to the deck and all in front of me, just a sea of people. And I was like, wow, this is pretty insane for our first time on the boat, but they heard about our first set. They told their friends, they were talking about it and throughout the next day or so, everyone was like, ‘Man, I can’t wait for that second set. The first set blew me away. I can’t wait to hear some more.’ And they bullied us for an encore after we finished that set.
You weren’t planning to do one?
No, no, we weren’t. (laughs) Dude, we played 40 or 45 minutes. I’m not going to lie. That was the second set of the year, and that’s also the second set that we’ve played since we finished tour in mid-October. So we go from playing 30-minute sets to a 45-minute set, we’re playing new songs and everything, and I was just a little bit winded, I’m not gonna lie. But then after the set, I was like, hey guys, we need to sell shirts because last time we played, you guys say you’re gonna go buy some. But I heard we only sold like five shirts. And then everyone was like, (chants) ‘One more song, one more song.’ I was like, all right, we’ll play one more song if you guys go buy a T-shirt. We’re gonna have meet-and-greet happening right after the set. So we played the ending of one of our songs, and they went nuts. They’re not supposed to mosh on that boat.
Really?
But they moshed. Yeah, Knocked Loose did that though. Because when Knocked Loose played, they didn’t say anything. They were just like, all right guys, let’s have fun. And everyone just took that as OK and just started moshing. There’s a no moshing rule on that boat because it’s old people and stuff, and people get hurt and this and that. While it’s cool that people want to do stuff like that, I think it’s just crazy that, especially during our set, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t warrant them to do it. I was just like, hey guys, last song. And they were like, OK, yessir. It was a cool experience, man. I will say that hopefully we get invited for next year.
With the new album, what direction were you hoping to take the album when you started writing, and do you think it wound up where you expected it to?
No, it didn’t end up where I wanted it to be, but it still is in a good place. What I was trying to do, which hopefully they don’t see this and take anything about it, but I love bands like Code Orange and I love their “I Am King” era, just how it feels like a slasher film. So I essentially wanted to try to get that with our record, where it felt very cutting edge and very cinematic. I was using special stuff to mime a guitar tone sound, like crazy HM2s and stuff that hardcore bands use. So essentially what I was trying to do was create this extremely gritty, Code Orange-like top layer crust of heaviness, if that makes sense.
Because there’s not very many bands that give a cool vibe to where it’s like you have this record and it’s cinematic and then you’ll have their video like “Dreams in Inertia.” You have this album that’s heavy as hell, but then it’s not like it goes softer, but there’s a different vibe to it. So I was trying to take influence from a little bit of that. I didn’t really have the influence from Linkin Park like I usually do. My guitarist, he wrote a good chunk of the album, a little bit under half, but his influence on it was a lot of Korn and Limp Bizkit. So you can hear that in a lot of his stuff, but when I wrote this stuff, ‘cause I write the other songs, I was trying to just give a conceptual, heavy feel.
I wanted it to resonate and not feel like it was just another song for people to be hyped about and then forget about it. I’m writing the full-length songs that have this formulated thought to where I’m storytelling. I was trying to do stuff like that. And then the other hits and stuff that we put out, like the ones that Brandon (Castaneda) wrote, are the upbeat bangers, real jump-up type stuff. I’m honored to have someone like Brandon in the band because he’s like me 10 years ago, super hungry, willing to do anything to make stuff happen. He’s got skills. He’s a phenomenal drummer, and he’s a phenomenal guitarist. So on both of those ends, he makes everything sound good.
Between me and him, we wrote like 30 demos for this album. and a lot of mine were weird. They’re real heavy stuff, but it had a lot of electronic mixed in it. It was drum and bass and stuff like that. I’m just saving that for later because I feel like I didn’t have enough time to nurture it the way I wanted it to. But with what we have, I think the album turned out perfectly imperfect, if that makes sense. I have high expectations of things that I do because I have to be hard on myself. If I don’t push myself, no one else will, unfortunately. With the demos and stuff I wrote, it sounded like Danny Elfman wrote this stuff and Danny Elfman, Nine Inch Nails and stuff like that are a good influence point. But I didn’t quite get a chance to put that on this album.
You’ve got that for the future then…
Yeah, I’m still writing for the new stuff right now, just based off of what we didn’t put on this album. But I like the album. I listen to it a lot whenever I fall asleep. I’ll spin it one time and if I wake up halfway through the album, I’ll turn it off. But I’m trying to program my brain. I used to do that a lot with the music and then I would get tired of listening to it and I would hate it, but this is the one release where I’m like, OK, I got to pace myself, give it a week break, don’t listen to it. And then whenever you’re working out or skating somewhere, turn it back on. I try to give myself times like that to experience it because I want it to be absorbed in whenever I’m kind of idle rather than doing something, even though our music is meant for people who are doing something. It’s essentially like pre-workout. It’s going to get your blood boiling. You’re going to be feeling like, all right, cool, I can run through a brick wall right now. That’s the experience I want people to have, but I don’t know, I’m just trying to experiment with ways to indulge in it, if you will.
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It’s interesting that you mentioned Code Orange because they’re from Pittsburgh, too. Did you see them before they went on hiatus?
Yeah, I saw Code Orange back then. I knew of Code Orange since 2012 when they were Code Orange Kids. I used to listen to them a lot. I saw them first I wanna say in 2014 or 2015. It was whenever they came out with “I Am King.” It was when it first dropped and everybody was going crazy about that album. I was like, yeah, dude, this is next level. It’s so in your face, cutting edge, and the way that Reba (Meyers) would do all of her parts. I just liked the band because I felt like they grew. Obviously they changed their name from Code Orange Kids to Code Orange. And I’m like, that’s (expletive) awesome. It was sick.
I think their old stuff, the punk stuff, I think it was cool. I don’t think that the new stuff is comparable to that stuff because it’s just different eras. I think it was an incredible band. It sucks that they had to go because I was really following them throughout covid, seeing what they were doing with the streaming stuff and everything. I’m glad that it kind of put them in different worlds though. I think Jami (Morgan)’s working with rappers and stuff like that. Reba’s playing for (Marilyn) Manson and she’s doing her own solo stuff, and it sounds incredible. The rest of the guys in the band … they’re phenomenal musicians.
Jami and Eric “Shade” Balderose are doing something called Nowhere2Run, which is a more cinematic/techno project, hosting raves and stuff like that.
Oh, that’s fire. I didn’t know that. But that’s essentially how the Unity stuff is, too. You do the metal stuff, and then you try to go as hard as you can. I’m not saying that they hit a ceiling. But you feel like you hit a ceiling. And you’re like, we like other music, we like other influences. Then you just kind of take a step back from the spotlight of the metal/hardcore scene. And then you go do what you want to do, and you start making the money that you are supposed to make, rather than whatever we make as a band. I’ll tell you, the money I’ve gotten paid to just go do a DJ set versus the money that I’ve gotten paid to travel 12 hours across the country to go play, if I could just do my DJ stuff, I’m not saying instead of the metal stuff, but if I could play on tour with my band, and let’s say I finished my set at 9:00, 9:30 or something like that. And then I could set up at a club down the street, and DJ from 10:30 to 1 a.m. and make some money, I’d be happy, because I’m getting a mix of both. And then also I’m making an insane amount of money, just for doing what I love.
You’re talking about these different genres of music. Is there a song on the album that makes the case for where you want to go in the future? Or do you think you’re still in that rap-metal world?
I’ve been talking to my manager just about newer stuff because whenever we turned this album in, it’s our last album with our label. So we’re technically unsigned after that. I’ve been just talking to him about experimenting with different sounds. I don’t really care too much about playing the rock ‘n’ roll game. We’ve gotten songs on Octane on the radio, and it’s cool, it’s great. They’re not hounding us. They’re not knocking at our door asking for new music or anything. And then when we put out new music, they’re not really saying, yo, let’s put it up or anything like that. So I’m like, that’s cool, that’s great. So that gives me more of a reason to try other things. I want to experiment with slam or deathcore stuff to where I can still keep it Unity to where it doesn’t get stale. So when people listen to our music, I want them to listen to this heavy, intense song. But you’re still going to get some rap elements in there. It’s just going to be different. I want to channel more horrorcore into our stuff. It just depends because I don’t want to stray too far away from what we’ve been doing as a band. I still would do rapping and everything. I would still put the beats in there, but I just need more influences. Even if we take influences from pop music and flip it and make it sound a lot dirtier and stuff, that’s what I’m trying to do.
The latest single is “STFU,” so was there anything in particular that inspired that song?
No, not really. We barely write together, but Brandon and I, he came over one day and we were just talking about something. I think we were going to try to write something. I remember making the intro of that song, like the little high-pitch voice. I used that for my electronic project. I was just kind of doing it as a placeholder for the song and then just kind of stuck in there. I wrote a lot of the vocals for that song. I keep telling people that I only wrote “Ready to Die Pt. 2” before I went to the studio, but I wrote “STFU” because I was trying to figure out how to make the song cohesive, because when we first made it, it was just a bunch of parts that were put together, but obviously with the vocals, it ties it together a little bit more. I like that song. I didn’t think that it was the strongest contender, but I mean, people still like it. We put out the video and it’s getting playlist love and everything. People are reposting it. People were like, yo, this sounds refreshing. So I’m glad that the song that I thought a little less of was more to people.
Sometimes you have a different opinion than what the audience might, right?
Yeah, I’m still trying to balance that. It’s a hard balance trying to make sure that you’re writing something cohesive enough for the people to listen to and then also you’re writing something that feels fluid enough for yourself to perform. I feel like the fans don’t want cohesiveness; they just want to be on edge all the time. They’re like, what’s coming up next? What’s coming up next? I don’t write music like that. I’m going to write a well-thought out song. I want my songs to sound like a very well-composed email, if that makes sense. The slang is there and everything. There’s some grit, that’s all that stuff, but I want the structure of the song to actually make sense, even if it’s repetitive.
I’m module-ing off of pop music whenever I write. You got your two, three hooks in the song, you have two verses, you have a bridge or your breakdown. I make sure that every song has something like that, but I also try to make sure that I can write songs like a song called “Paranoia” on there that’s very upbeat. It’s got this vibe, but I try to make songs — and I learned this from Lil Peep — but I try to write songs to where you don’t give the listener enough time to know that the hook is coming back, like the chorus is coming back. So it’s just kind of like writing a song to where the verse is so cohesive with the hook, it almost sounds like it’s a part of the verse. But I feel like that song really locked that in and that was where I wanted to be as far as the album, songwriting, structure and stuff like that.
“STFU” is riff salad. It sounds kind of cool. And then people are like, this song is sick. I could tell some people, it’s not their favorite song. They’re just being supportive. People are like, a new Unity album, yeah, I’m sorry, the last two singles are not your favorite. But you can’t give them too many good singles before the album comes out because then, what if you listen to the album, and then you hear the singles that we put out, that weren’t singles, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, the rest of the album is kind of cool, but the singles that they put out are fire.’ I don’t want to hear that. I want people to actually dive into the album and be like, OK, let’s check it out. They’re gonna get past “Heinous,” which is track two, they’re gonna get to “Lucid,” and a lot of the metalcore kids are gonna be like, yo, this is crazy. Then after that, you’re gonna go into “Paranoia,” and then everybody else who loves Unity is gonna be like, oh, OK, this (expletive)’s rocking. I like to do this thing where I tease them. I like to give them one or two good songs and then the other two songs are going to be the experimental songs, just to let them know what’s coming on the album. But I can’t give them all the bangers right away because I feel like that almost defeats the purpose of making the album. I might as well just put out the singles with all bangers.
It makes sense. You have to leave something to find on the album.
I like the songs that I wrote, but I think that what Brandon did on the album was incredible. He’s responsible for “Heinous” and then “Enjoy Tha Show,” he and Jon (Flores) my drummer, they came up with the instrumental and stuff. I’m just here freestyling on their songs, because I didn’t have enough time to sit there and listen to a song for a whole day and then be like, all right, I got the lyrics. I just had to go into the booth and just rap my lines and I’m like, OK, that sounds solid. All right, I’ll write this down and then I’ll rap the next line.
It’s a good album. I’m hyped on it. I’m excited for it. I’m very excited to see how people respond, once you get past “Heinous” on the record, because this other person I was talking to was like, the middle of the album is the most insane run because it’s just banger after banger after banger after banger, but no one will ever know until the album comes out. I’m honestly glad because I feel like we just need more listens on the album, rather than on the singles that we put out. “Heinous” is great. “Enjoy Tha Show” is great. I know that “STFU” and “Body Roc” won’t stay in our top listened songs. But I like for that to be like that, because I can’t wait to see what songs from the album people actually do replace them with.