Q&A: UNB4RRED Play Dead on Debut EP
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY GIGI KANG ☆
FANS OF HEAVY MUSIC, CHECK OUT UNB4RRED—whose debut EP Play Dead. was released on August 9.
The UK-based metal/alt-rock blend was formed in 2023 by Daniel Davies and Lewis Godfrey. Just when they started considering disbanding, Áine Caunter reached out in July 2024. They’ve been not only bandmates but best friends since.
Speaking on the EP, the band describes that it shows “how much noise can be made from just three people.” They played a release show on August 11 at Daltons in Brighton.
Play Dead. opens with a suspenseful, electronic intro track called “Ghosts.” which leads into the title track. “Play Dead.” presents an instantly addicting guitar riff that scratches the brain just right. Caunter’s vocals tip-toe in the first verse but quickly soar in the chorus as she asserts, “When you look in my eyes, I’ll play dead.”
The third track is “Creep.” which includes “eerie sounding slides” as described by Godfrey. As the title suggests, it’s about experiences with people who don’t respect boundaries, who make one uncomfortable, but UNB4RRED make it empowering. With female vocals amplifying the message, it comes across loud and clear through the lyrics: “Leave me the fuck alone.”
The final track, “Harmony.” is guitar-led and the heaviest track instrumentally. Overall, the EP mixes elements of metal, alt grunge, and hard rock. It’s not just one genre, and that’s exactly what the band wants. Davies shares, “We won’t be limiting ourselves anytime soon.”
Read Luna’s full conversation with UNB4RRED below.
LUNA: How did the release show go? What was your favorite part?
GODFREY: The release show was amazing! Couldn’t have asked for a better crowd to play to or venue to hold it in. We all had quite a lot of nerves going into the set as it was the first time we were both headlining and having the whole set recorded live. Hopefully it will be on YouTube soon! Once the show was underway with the other bands—Distress Call, Spooky Huge, Ragdoll—all putting on incredible sets, we fed off that energy and were raring to go. We had an absolute blast!
My favorite part personally would absolutely be getting to see people’s reactions to not only the EP but the two songs off our—as of now, untitled—second EP that we hope to have out in the first half of next year! We’re really happy with the direction the music is going. We were over the moon to see people enjoying it and even singing along!
To add … my least favorite part was being trapped on stage as everyone sang happy birthday to me—I’m too big to hide behind the drum kit!
CAUNTER: It was his birthday in three hours, we had to! The whole night was an absolute dream come true, the crowd was phenomenal, our sound engineer, Suzanna, was incredible to work with, and our photographer and videographer were amazing too—they even got in the pit for the encore!
LUNA: It has been a year since Áine joined the band! What are some highlights from the past year of working together?
GODFREY: She has taken to it like a duck to water! I can’t describe the surprise she has been for someone with almost no live experience coming into the band. Not to mention she has fit in a treat with me and Dan. She’s just as committed to the project and has brought a whole new dynamic to the band. To be honest, we couldn’t have asked more from her, she has been immense!
Also, the fact the band is still here is a big bonus! When Áine joined, Dan and I were pretty close to ending the project. I had decided to step back from vocals, but the search for a vocalist was not going well. We were only really getting applications from, for lack of a better phrase, vocalists worse than me! Then, when we were probably only a few weeks from calling it, Áine reached out, had an audition the next week, and was part of the band after the first song.
CAUNTER: I’m a bit emotional at that! It has been such a pleasure working with Dan and Lewis. I love them so much and can’t thank them enough for welcoming me into the band—despite my awful guitar playing in my initial audition tape. It’s probably a cop out to say it’s all been a highlight, so a couple from me would be the rehearsals when we come in with a new idea and it just clicks and falls into place so easily, especially Dan’s excitement playing around with new tones. Obviously, making and releasing our first EP and having a release party has been insane, and I can’t wait for what we’re working on now to come out. When we go to other gigs together and end up having pints of prosecco—it has become a running gag but I’d actually really recommend it!
LUNA: Play Dead. starts with a brief instrumental. Why did you decide on “Ghosts.” as an introduction to the EP?
DAVIES: To tell you the truth, “Ghosts.” was initially never going to feature on the EP. It was composed as an experimental passion project by me straight after seeing Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. It was more or less utilized as a placeholder to fill up the EP. Nevertheless, it grew on us with it thematically and harmonically matching “Play Dead.” I guess “Ghosts.” just came to be a suitable intro track which sets the stage for the rest of the EP, whether that be in personal or live environments.
LUNA: The EP is inspired by various personal stories. What role does creating music play in how you process your experiences?
CAUNTER: Songwriting and musical ideas [tend to] come at really random times for me, but I always find it extremely cathartic even if the inspiration came from an event I thought I’d moved on from years ago. “Harmony.” is a melodramatic ending to a relationship but was very much inspired by a toxic relationship I experienced years ago [and it] turned into an extreme tale of possession. I often find parts of that relationship coming back to haunt me, but writing “Harmony.” gave me an avenue to release all my feelings that I was scared to let go of.
I enjoy writing hyperbolic stories as it is fuelled by a real life experience but morphed into a not-so fantastical tale where I can process my experiences without it being too explicitly personal. I can’t say I’ve ever written a song around positive feelings or experiences—yet—but the process of creating music validates my anger and gives me an outlet. I used to just suffer in silence, but now I can invite people to scream about whatever makes them angry with me. It’s beautiful.
LUNA: A song like “Creep.” is an experience that, unfortunately, a lot of women could relate to. Fittingly, it has a very dreadful vibe through the guitar tone. How did that song come together?
GODFREY: Dan and I had made “Creep.” as part of the first EP. The idea came about because Dan decided to bring a slide in for a rehearsal and we built the song around the eerie sounding slides that you hear at the start of the song. Then, like all of the songs in the EP, we just went for it just to see what we could come up with off the cuff and ended up with something not far from the song that was released, minus the vocals obviously. It was also the track that made me decide that I wasn’t cut out for lead vocals. Not because of lack of skill in delivery per se, but because my lyrics sucked outside of “Play Dead.”!
CAUNTER: At the point when I joined the band, “Creep.” had a full instrumental demo and Lewis had been working on lyrics that flipped the perspective of Radiohead’s “Creep.” I didn’t actually ever see or hear his lyrical ideas, but was intrigued by the idea and obviously the word “creep” brings up a lot of personal associations for me. A few days after playing around with some ideas, I had a really unpleasant encounter with a man and, tying into your previous question, had no idea how to process it at the moment other than write about how angry I felt.
I’m not very good at talking about my feelings but writing them down has always helped me and within about five minutes, I had fully drafted the lyrics and had a clear melody in mind that I put to the demo as soon as I got home. There were many tweaks to be made but it was the first full set of lyrics I had written for the band and I was, and still am, really proud of them. I hope anyone who has experienced an uncomfortable, or worse, situation with another person can join me in shouting “leave me the fuck alone” someday!
LUNA: Your sound isn’t limited to a specific alt genre. There are metal elements, along with grunge. What kind of sounds are you hoping to experiment with that you haven’t yet?
DAVIES: You’re absolutely correct that we don’t limit ourselves to one sound. Hell, we’d probably say we have a hard time defining it as a band. Though, what we can say is that we won’t be limiting ourselves anytime soon. Our upcoming songs will be featuring a plethora of different elements such as shoegaze, acoustics, djent, prog, and samba elements.
It’ll be hard to predict what we will experiment with next as we mostly run on impulses and spur-of-the-moment ideas. However, what we can tell you are the personal preferences within the band, which will likely play a part in future songs. Personally, I love Latin/Afro music and would like to integrate it into a hard rock environment. Áine is into her “witchy” elements, which you’ll likely see in upcoming songs or breakdowns. Finally, Lewis loves his groves and syncopation, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see more funky motifs within our songs.
