Horns Up

Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media

We spoke to vocalist Adam Glynn from his home in Footscray in late July. Melbourne had just gone into Stage 4 restrictions. His retail job is considered an essential service (for now, anyway), but he explains to Sense Music Media that he is a natural homebody who doesn’t have kids, so he’s been dealing with these strange times better than most.

The Interview

“I’ve just been putting my energy into music, so it’s been a nice distraction … One thing about the virus that I find interesting; a lot of people, they have their daily occupation, and that’s the big breakup and distraction of their day. I’m finding that a lot of people aren’t really happy in themselves … I know it’s been trying on relationships, because people get married and they settle down and have kids, and everyone goes to work every day, and the kids go to school, and now all of a sudden, families are all confined to this one space. It’s been a “test of truth”, I guess, for the choices we’ve all made.”

“I sort of feel like this year has made ambition a bit redundant.”

It is amazing what you can accomplish online. I mention that I’ve been working with Sense Music Media founder Jimmy Wah since March without ever meeting him face-to-face or even being in the same state, let alone the same postcode. Adam compares it to the beginnings of Myspace, and the early social networking it provided.

“You just started adding everybody who added you. I made a lot of new friends that way. I have a lot of Facebook acquaintances who live in other states who I’ve never really hung out with, in some cases never even heard their voice or spoken to them. I haven’t really done music properly in [almost] ten years now.”

His last band, tech metal four-piece FIVE STAR PRISON CELL, called it a day in 2011.

“I’ve always wanted to get into this sort of situation, where it’s just one or two musicians, [who] just want to write and record and put stuff out. I’m not interested in playing live, or putting that much of myself into it.”

Glynn mentions that he’s already sitting on the next Unicorn releases.

“We’ve got a bunch of songs. We’ve almost got an album’s worth of material, but we just thought that the first three songs were the best, and [that they] were ready to go. The other stuff, I think, is even better, but it just wasn’t ready. We want to wait until we can get back together and be in a room together and throw ideas around.”

The genesis of this collaboration can be traced back to Glynn’s days fronting FRANKENBOK. The Melbourne crew infamously covered pop group MADISON AVENUE’s 2000 hit Don’t Call Me Baby in a metal styling on their 2001 EP Loopholes & Great Excuses. At gigs Adam would often pick someone from the crowd to sing the female vocals, and it was through one of these women that he met BIMBO (Phillip Georgio). Earlier this year they bonded over a few beers and began swapping music, before Glynn went to see him in Craigieburn and hammered out what would become Buoyant Skin Graft. Once COVID kicked off, they weren’t able to reconvene, so Glynn ended up sending him some vocals he had lying around from a project he’d worked on last year that hadn’t worked out.

“When Phil and I got started, we literally got together for the first time, to write our first song, and that day the restrictions got put back in, the Stage 3 restrictions, so basically everything we had to do was through phone and file sharing and stuff. I only actually recorded a bunch of vocals once in a room with him, and then I had a bunch of stuff that I’d recorded at home, and [I] would send them to him, and he would chop them up and rearrange stuff, and ask me to record other stuff and send it back to him. So it was kind of interesting – a very unique way of recording this EP.”

The harshness of the sound is remarkable. Where did it come from?

“We just tried to write some fun songs. [BIMBO] and I are big fans of metal from the 90s. He loves COAL CHAMBER and PANTERA. I’m the same. I love DAMAGE, I like a bit of BLOOD DUSTER – all that Aussie stuff. [We were] just trying to combine the two together.

Don’t worry, we asked – what’s with the name UNICORN 69ER?

“I had this idea for UNICORN 69ER of two horses rearing back with their horns up each other’s arseholes, doing the whole Unicorn 69er thing. That was the image I saw, and I thought that was quite humorous, because I’ve had the name for ages. I’ve [always wanted] to call a project that. I actually wanted to call the band I was rehearsing with last year [UNICORN 69ER], but they weren’t keen on it. They wanted to call themselves “The Clams” or something, and I was like, “OK, yeah, no.” I love the name – I think it’s really funny.”

EP Review – In Stereo Where Available

Track #1 – Shard

Opener Shard is absolutely terrifying. Down-tuned riffs lurch back and forth, the drums start pounding, and just when you think you know where the band is heading, the tempo spasms and you’re yanked by the collar in a completely different direction. Glynn’s rasping vocals, distorted into inhuman frequencies, scythe through the chaos like death threats through a walkie-talkie.

Track #2 – Buoyant Skin Graft

Like NINE INCH NAILS’ The Downward Spiral, In Stereo Where Available literally sounds like it’s going to explode – each instrument, each vocal, pushed so far into red-line that it threatens to rupture your listening medium and tear a hole in the world. The drumming on second track Buoyant Skin Graft is so overwhelmingly loud that you, dear listener, might just fear for your speakers. Adam Glynn’s vocals are as kaleidoscopic and multi-faceted as the sepia-tinged cover art, bouncing from a ROTTEN SOUND-style bark to MIKE PATTON-like vocal gymnastics. BIMBO’s instrumentation is monstrously weighty – the riffs thick and abrasive, the groove heavy enough to level a building.

Track #3 – Rainbows & Bullet Holes

The opening of Rainbows & Bullet Holes sounds like a jackhammer – a maelstrom of double-kick drumming and fuzzy, disruptive snare galloping under Glynn’s distorted barking – before spacing out into chunky, down-tuned breakdowns. The tempo spasms between volleys of ballistic full-speed riffage and staccato pounding. It’s violent, abrasive art.

The Verdict

Unpleasant music for challenging times, Unicorn 69er’s opening salvo to the world, In Stereo Where Available, is a harrowing headfirst plunge into the abyss.

8/10

Download

Get your copy of In Stereo Where Available on Bandcamp

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