Dead Unicorn: Horny Devils

by Peter Aaron

Hold your ears, it’s the end of the world. Or at least what it might well sound like: a rehearsal by apocalyptic power-punk/noise duo Dead Unicorn at the band’s home base, midtown Kingston club The Basement. And it’s a well-suited roar indeed, given the obsessions explored via the band’s recently reissued 2007 debut, Yellowstone Supervolcano (on the appropriately named Music for End Times label), not to mention the convincingly official-looking propaganda brochures it distributes at gigs.

“Everyone I know is obsessed with the end times these days,” says drummer and vocalist Zac Shaw, 27. “We’re all from the Cold War generation. I watch a lot of [programs on] the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel—all of that stuff about Nostradamus and the Apocalypse. It’s just the zeitgeist right now.”

But the cheery theme of world destruction is more than the timely topic that informs Dead Unicorn’s album; it’s also the central concept behind the band itself. “The idea first hit Zac and me when we met this local character called Old Man Willie, who told us about the massive volcano under Yellowstone Park that’s due to erupt at any time,” says bassist and vocalist Paul Heath, 31. “When it blows, it’s supposed to destroy a huge part of North America. That got us thinking about the end-times scenario, and we came up with role-playing games based on how people would react if they heard the world was going to end.”

“We’re both pretty sarcastic and darkly humorous, so we came up with the idea of a band that only writes music about the end times,” explains Shaw. “The idea is to devote each album we do to a particular color-coded scenario. The first one, which is Code Red, is all about the Yellowstone volcano; the next one, Code Orange, is about nuclear war. Then there [will be] albums about tsunamis, asteroid collisions, epidemic diseases, even extraterrestrial invasion and the Rapture.”

We get the idea. But what about the two-piece lineup, which came together in 2005, how did that evolve? “Mostly out of the frustration of the experiences we had in larger bands,” says Shaw, who also drums for local quintet Counterfeit Disaster and previously played in New York outfit Some Action. (Heath did time with Albany’s Phlegm Chuckers and the now defunct Kiss Ups, another bass/drums duo.) “It’s really the optimum setup; less people to argue with and divide up the money with. Probably the worst thing about it is that we always get people asking if they can play guitar for us. We’re not looking for one, thanks. But it’s funny, I told my grandma that our band was just drums and bass and she said, ‘That doesn’t sound like much of a band, Zac.’”

Curiously, it was another grandmother, that of Shaw’s girlfriend, who lent the band the basement space where it recorded much of Yellowstone Supervolcano with producer and engineer Jason Martin. “Zac’s also a writer, and he had a really unique concept for the album,” says Martin. “There are these crazy skits and fake news reports between a lot of the songs, and he came up with most of those. We also recorded some parts in the basement of [Kingston venue] Backstage Studio Productions. We chose both places because they have a thick concrete lining, which makes for great reverb. But it also felt like we were in a bunker when we were recording, which definitely fit the vibe.” Since the CD’s release the band has taken the concept ever higher, drafting in filmmaker and videographer Chris Rahm for live backdrop projections and the making of a performance video.

Dead Unicorn has also taken its dark and ear-splitting concept to the road, playing South by Southwest last year and hitting house-party gigs (most of them in basements) with its “big sister band,” Warwick’s Casket Architects, on the way down to the Texas festival and back up. The deadly duo hopes to hit the open highways again in the future but for now is playing it close to home, doing local and regional dates on weekends and writing material for Yellowstone Supervolcano’s forthcoming follow-up, Global Thermonuclear War. (The group also has a 7” due out this summer and a track on a soon-to-released compilation benefiting the West Memphis 3’s legal defense fund.)

“The stuff we write songs about is in the back of everyone’s minds, even though most people don’t like to talk about it,” says Shaw. “We just bring it to the forefront. To us, it’s not depressing to talk about it. It’s like this: If you thought you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today? By focusing on dying, we want to make people get into living.”

Dead Unicorn will play with the Casket Architects and
Tiger Flowers at the Rug Room in New Paltz on April 17.
www.deadunicorn.com.