Unsung Podcast

This week we're diving into why bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and King Gizzard are pulling their music from Spotify - and why it probably won't change anything.

It's a trickier situation than it seems, but the whole mess starts with Napster in 1999. 80 million people sharing MP3s illegally crashed the music industry, dropping revenue 15% in four years and creating a chain reaction that led to piracy running rampant for muc...

As stated at numerous points in this episode, a lot of the things discussed here can be found in the documentary Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus. We urge you to go check out that film here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/qlazzarus as it is a brilliant piece of work.

Everyone knows Hulk Hogan's entrance music, but how many know the fascinating story behind Rick Derringer's "Real American"? With the recent passing of Hulk Hogan, we thought we’d revisit a previous episode and update it with new information. Oh, and also to film the whole dang thing as we weren’t doing that back then.

So, this week we’re exploring the unlikely journey of a song that became one of wrestling's most iconic ...

Like us, are you somewhat uncomfortable of about Pantera playing with Metallica? Why exactly might that be? We need to explore what it is about Phil Anselmo that gives people that icky feeling.

This week we try to put some meat on the bones about the rumours that have dogged Anselmo for the last three decades of his career. White supremacist? Racist? Just a bit of a steamer?  What is it about this guy that has gotten him this reput...

You may have seen the AI band The Velvet Sundown pop up in the news recently and thought "well, that's weird". Long-time fans of the pod probably also thought "when are they going to do an episode on that?" Well, here it is!

The Velvet Sundown - What Actually Happened?

If you've been following us for a while you'll know that every 18 months or so we seem to return to broader discussions about where music and technology int...

This week we're talking about US Maple. Which is a bit like saying we're talking about having your teeth drilled without anaesthetic.

The Chicago quartet spent twelve years making music that deliberately disappointed every expectation you might have about rock music. They took guitars, drums, and vocals and somehow made them sound like they were arguing with each other in a language nobody understood. It was brilliant. It was infur...

This week we're diving headfirst into the gloriously pretentious world of No Wave - the three-year New York art scene that somehow managed to influence everything that followed. Chris has somehow convinced Mark and our resident Italian punk professor Ferro to explore how a bunch of art school dropouts in a financially bankrupt New York accidentally created one of music's most important movements.

We start with New York City in 1978...

This week we're tackling the wonderfully niche concept of anti-rock. Or more specifically, we're trying to work out what the hell it actually is, why Google doesn't seem to know either, and how it connects to everything from Frank Zappa taking the piss out of The Beatles to bands who are so talented they deliberately make themselves sound rubbish.

Chris has dragged poor Mark and our resident punk professor Ferro down a rabbit hole ...

This week we're diving into the wonderfully gloomy world of Emma Ruth Rundle. Or more specifically, we're having a bit of a discussion whether she's actually goth or not, what goth even means, and how it may be broader than some think. Musically, Chris thinks most of her catalogue is a bit pants but she has artistic integreity. Mark reckons she's brilliant.

Emma Ruth Rundle has spent her career shape-shifting between projects like ...

This week we're talking about the Leeds band Vessels. Or more specifically we're talking about their quite abrupt change from identikit post rock band to something a lot more electronic and a lot more enticing.

By their own admission, Vessels had something of a problem: the band had to evolve or die. They were trapped making the same post rock songs as everyone else, using the same delay pedals, creating the same "emotional" buildu...

This week Dave returns as we dive into our bag of covermount CDs and unearth a real gem.

Joe from Shit You May Not Have Seen Podcast/the bands Go Down Fighting and Man Must Die, jois us this week. And his pick is somewhat controversial: Immortal Technique's second album second album Revolutionary Vol. 2. In true unsung style, it ends up leading to a massive debate about separating art and artist, all whilst looking closely at his politics and dissemination of conspiracy theories. Felipe Coronel fled Peru's civil war as...

On this episode we dive deep into the musical history of one of Italy's most fascinating and forward-thinking bands - Krisma (or Chrisma as they were originally known). This husband and wife duo from Milan created music that was light years ahead of its time, with their 1977 album "Chinese Restaurant" laying the groundwork for sounds that wouldn't become mainstream until decades later.

We explore how this band went from I...

In part two of our interview Arno Michaelis, we navigate the bizarre intersection of music, ideology, and redemption.

If you've ever wondered how extremist movements actually work, this offers some great insight. Arno gives us the inside scoop on how a skinhead band like Centurion shifted 20,000 records whilst still getting royally ripped off by their label boss.

This week and next we're joined by a very special guest - Arno Michaelis, author, anti-extremism activist, reformed white nationalist and former singer of the neo-Nazi metal band Centurion.

You may have seen Arno recently on YouTube where he did a rather brilliant interview with Business Insider. As long time fans of the pod know, Chris' interest in the far-right is something we've touched upon a lot over the last 7 and a half year...

We've been a bit of a post-hardcore kick this year, so we thought we'd swing to the commercial end of the spectrum and talk about Alexisonfire. Specifically, Mark has chosen their 2022 comeback album 'Otherness' and we have a bit of a barney about it, as Chris and Mark's opinions on the band couldn't be more different.

We spend time exploring how this Canadian quintet revolutionised post-hardcore with their three-vocalist approach,...

This week, we’re talking about Julie Christmas – a woman whose voice could peel paint off the walls one moment and tuck you into bed the next. Known for her work with Made Out of Babies, Battle of Mice, and her collaboration with Cult of Luna on Mariner, Julie’s debut solo album The Bad Wife is our focus here — an underrated little firebomb from 2010 that mixes noise, beauty, and some very sharp edges.

We also trace her entire care...

This week, we’re going in the exact opposite direction as last week talking about one of the most quietly revolutionary figures in modern music: Arvo Pärt. That's right, we're pivoting HARD from death metal to neoclassical music. Strap in!

We go deep on his early works, his religious conversion, and his shift into the sparse, meditative style known as tintinnabuli. Along the way we discuss how his music achieves emotional intensity...

Once upon a time Man Must Die released two albums on Relapse Records and toured an absolute shit load. I actually remember when they toured with Machine Head, which is a fairly impressive thing for any metal band to achieve.

Man Must Die were a death metal band, and in some quarters they were even called a technical death metal band. A term that vocalist, and our good pal, Joe disputes. And with good reason - technical death metal ...