Unchipped screams into the void on ‘3D’

On the surface, at least, the three songs on Unchipped’s new cassette EP appear wildly different, the tracks centered on a werewolf-feline hybrid, an astronaut driven to madness, and a seductive, would-be cult leader, respectively. And yet, at their core, the three are linked, each featuring a narrator who has been afflicted in some way and lost a part of who they are in the process.

“And it’s been like that with all the songs in Unchipped,” said singer Pat Snyder, who joined bandmates Ty Owen (bass), Joel Archibald (drums) and Chrys Cornetet (guitar) for an interview ahead of a concert celebrating the release of Unchipped 3D at Cafe Bourbon Street on Friday, April 10, with support from Prolific Secreter, Disnerve, and Unmonumental. “There’s always a bit of hopelessness and giving up, and then also saying eff it and running with things, whether it be running with the devil, or running with space bugs, or fighting AI, because it’s just terrible to exist when the world is this screwed up.”

For the band members, Unchipped exists as an antidote to these increasingly maddening times – a point of connection that can keep the four tethered in contrast with the astronaut who forces open the airlock and launches their body into the abyss on the road-grading “Space Madness.” “All is cold in this void,” Snyder growls repeatedly as the song draws to a close, his voice navigating an industrial blender of pulverizing drums and slashing, serrated guitar. 

“The things that make me feel good right now are the inward things, and the things that feel within my control. Trying to make art and do things with my friends is what keeps me sane and keeps me going,” said Owen, who drew a contrast between the more outward look surfaced on the band’s newest release and its comparatively inward debut EP, Systemic Deletion, from 2023, which arose out of the early pandemic years. “And if you look at the stuff on that one, and you look at a song like ‘Reflections,’ it talks about being stuck at home, staring at yourself, and not liking what you see as you’re slowly going crazy in isolation. And now this record is being written back out in the world.”

Not that this shift in perspective has provided any relief. “It’s scary, for sure,” Snyder said. “I turn on the news and see the stories, and it feels like we exist in some AI fever dream that has gone horribly wrong and is delivering insanity to us. … And the only thing I can do about it is write songs and scream and yell, and hopefully some people pay attention.”

Similar concepts course through a trio of unreleased songs the band intends to perform alongside the new EP at Bourbon Street, including one titled “It’s All Trash,” which Snyder said is about “feeling like the world is absolute trash,” and another titled “Taking It to the Streets,” which strikes a slightly more hopeful tone, the singer said, centered on the idea of “trying to get out there and make this trash world better.”

“And musically, it just feels like a progression of what we were doing,” Snyder continued. “We just got more intense, more aggressive. You know, the typical metal band bullshit. But, yeah, I’m pissed. We’re all pissed. And we may as well be pissed together rather than being pissed alone in our houses.”

While the EP captures a hair-on-fire immediacy, everything from the instrumentation to the lyrics reflective of the unrelenting pace with which our surroundings appear to be collapsing, the members of Unchipped have generally taken a more measured approach to making music. Owen, in particular, drew a contrast between his work in the band and the more in-the-moment approach required of him with S.T.A.T.I.C., the monthly experimental music showcase he has helped to run since March 2022, each edition of which sees he and David Reed teamed with a new musical collaborator in their shape-shifting project Fatal Gaze.

“And the rule is we don’t rehearse with that person, and we don’t have any conversation about what we’re going to do. And I think it’s really exciting to just throw it out there and then reflect on things afterwards,” said Owen, who will join Reed and Co. at Bourbon Street for the next installment of S.T.A.T.I.C. on Tuesday, April 28. “I think there are times when music can be ephemeral, where it exists for a moment, it is what it is, and then it disappears, and that’s okay. And I think that’s some of what I do at S.T.A.T.I.C., where it’s a Polaroid, a snapshot. … But with Unchipped, it’s a lot more analytical, where we think about the songs and how they’re going to take shape. … I want it to be something I can see years from now and still be proud of.”

Cornetet echoed these thoughts, sharing that his process for testing the durability of an album consists of listening to it “hundreds of times” while driving around the city in his van. “I’m pretty obsessive about music, where I’ll listen to the same thing over and over and critique it and nitpick even the tiniest bits. And it drives people I’m with crazy, like, ‘Oh, no. This one again?’” he said, and laughed. “It’s like looking at a painting every day for a year, where each day you’re trying to concentrate on different shapes, colors, textures. And that’s why I love the repeated onslaught. And if it stinks, there’s no way I could do that every day. If something builds pride the more you listen to it, I think that’s pretty special. And I think this EP has a little of that magic in it.”