Making a strong start to the new year, NuCore band Unhealthy While Unhinged releases their boldest track yet, "Lumos." Blending raw emotion with hard-hitting instrumentals, their latest single shines through with a bold statement of the band's signature sound--dark, versatile, and unapologetically intense. Since their formation, the band has been known for their mesmerizing lyrics, energetic performances, and fearless approach to storytelling. "Lumos" is nothing short of a powerful message and also an insight into what's to come from the band's evolution as artists. Recently, I had the chance to talk to members from the band, and here's what they had to say.
MSM: Hi, thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions for us today. Can you please introduce yourselves and tell us what role you play in the band?
Anthony: Hi, I'm Anthony and I'm the vocalist for this band.
Radic: I'm Radic, I play bass and manager, I guess. I do all the behind-the-scenes shit.
Anthony: You're the manager, booker, and promoter. The guy that does everything else besides writing because that's up to the other guy.
Colin: I'm Colin, I'm the drummer and I write a lot.
Anthony: You're the main writer for Unhealthy While Unhinged.
Colin: Thank you for that.
Radic: We are currently missing our lovely guitar player Alex right now. She plays guitar and helps with writing but she is not available right now.
MSM: For those who might be new to your band, how would you describe your sound and identity?
Colin: We are a metalcore NUCore band that tries our best to do unhinged antics.
Radic: I'd say the new direction of stuff based off of Lumos, our new release that just dropped, is that we are always doing some type of metalcore-style, like verses with breakdowns. There's also kind of experimental verses with very catchy courses and a little unhinged keeping it all together.
Anthony: We typically try to always switch things up and keep things new. Especially with our show antics, during our shows we'll have inflatables going out, and we'll have throwables going out, and we'll have giant penises flying around. Going crazy, confetti, bubbles, things like that. For our live shows, that's kind of what you would expect. Kind of just a full-on dance rave party, and our sound is kind of reminiscent of older metalcore and post-hardcore while also keeping in the post-hardcore chorus that is reminiscent of current Bring Me The Horizon. That's kind of the aim we are going for. Keeping things really fresh while also maintaining the individuality of ourselves.
Radic: Our Root.
MSM: Can you share the story behind your bands name and what it represent to you?
Radic: Yeah, so I was sitting at a bar, and somebody said that it would be hilarious if we made a band, and I was like, "Alright, cool, hold my beer." I hit up Colin; I was like, "Hey, want to make a band? It's going to be stupid." The worse the ideas got, the more I was like, "Alright, this is very unhealthy, and it's becoming very unhinged really quickly." Somebody was like, "That's a good band name." Then I was like, sold. The whole band started on a joke in a bar.
MSM: Since coming coming back from a hiatus that you guys took last year, did you encounter any challenges with getting back into the rhythm of creating music or did it just feel natural one you returned?
Anthony: Well, during the year off, what had happened is that we had kind of taken a step back to pursue our actual career, which is Unhinged Studios. So we opened up our own studio, which was pretty much designed around working with smaller artists and just helping other artists create content, create music videos, and kind of help coach them in the right direction. We had all gotten together, and we were like, "Ok, well, we know the plan, so how do we execute it?" Then once we executed it, we thought we should be helping other bands, and even in the past, we had always been talking with bands in our local scene. We would help give advice on how they should do things, things like that. So when we opened the studio, we essentially were doing all the same things for other bands except for ours. It was really the passion we had to do it, so when we started back up with UWU, it wasn't as difficult as you think it would be because we were just going back and doing it for our band instead of other bands for the year that we were doing it. Now, we are picking up the past for our band while still working with other bands, which is really cool.
Radic: I'd say the hardest thing is literally finding time and keeping everything organized. Things have just gotten so much busier with the expansion of the studio, and we are opening a second location attached to a venue. Now the band just got signed and stuff. We are touring a bunch this year, so it's just that our schedule became a lot more filled. The logistics of actual operations and getting back into writing and things like that, that was something I think we naturally were able to do. It's just organizing and maintaining the time.
MSM: How did your band come together, and what drew you to pursue metal core as a genre?
Radic: I can't speak for the other guys here, but what I can say is that for me I grew up in that Warped Tour environment. I've been touring, even on Warped Tour, since I was like 16 and in high school. The metal core and heavier genre have always just been a really good way to express myself, like taking things out on stage. If you ever see a live show, it's very chaotic, very high energy. I just can't do the things I want to do in other concert environments, like on the stage or in the pit. There's just something unique about this genre of music that you can't really get that type of energy and that type of excitement in any other genre, I think.
Anthony: For me, I grew up in a punk background. So I grew up listening to a lot of, like, the Ramones, Rancid, and Misfits. Those were some pretty big inspirations for me. My first ever show that I ever went to was a Misfits show; the sense of community and the sense of acceptance I got from that first show was so profound to me. From then on, every show that I went to in the metal scene and the post-hardcore scene or something like that. It was always just this sense of community, a sense of camaraderie. Every time you're in the mosh pit, if you go down in the pit, you pick someone up. No one stays on the ground. If you drop something, someone's always picking it up and putting it in the air. That's the type of energy and togetherness of everyone in the crowd. Either singing the song, singing the lyrics, or just being together has just always been a huge draw for me personally. You forget about the outside world, and all that's there are the 200 people or however many are in that venue. To just be in that scene and be from a punk background to a metalcore background. This specific genre of music and being with these people, there's always this togetherness that I always enjoyed. That's a big role in why I'm so drawn into this community and drawn to playing this music. I don't really personally listen to as much of this style of music that I play. So it's really interesting to be in this scene and have almost an entirely different taste in music.
Colin: I grew up with my dad playing in a metal band, so it's something that was always around me. There's just something about metal that I've always been drawn to. That's kind of why I went that route, because my father was always playing stuff in the basement when I was growing up. I'm pretty new to actually being out in the scene. Just recently with this band, I've been able to be at shows more often. Like Anthony said, the community is just amazing. It's also just one of the best scenes I've gotten to witness.
MSM: What was the inspiration behind your song "Lumos"? How did the concept of the song develop?
Radic: I would say it happened in a couple of different stages. We were talking about expanding our writing capabilities and what we were going to be doing with new music. That led to Colin pulling inspo from stuff that he had, and then him and Anthony basically took it from there. Then expanding into what it is. I'll let you guys talk about what it was like; I kind of just go, "Hey, I really think we should do something like this." Colin and Anthony really kind of execute that.
Anthony: Colin had a whole backlog of music that he was just kind of sitting on because he has been writing for however long he's been writing for. It was essentially a rework of one of his older songs, and we just sat down together. I was like, "Hey, let's do this chorus, and let's make this." It was one of those things where we got together in a room and just kind of picked apart one of his songs and really made it into what it is currently.
Radic: Once we heard it, it was like a no brainer that it would be the perfect song back. We were talking about wanting to expand are reach to a wider audience to begin with. I think this was perfect with adding chorus's and singing, things like that into it. We had other music out, but it was all very much so heavy screaming all the way through with like trap or hip-hop vocals. We never really pushed into the chorus and singing genres. That was something we were wondering how it will be received. It was something we defiantly wanted to intentionally try. I think Colin and Anthony have been very excited to want to try and get into that direction of things. I know that they resonate with music that has chorus's and things like that in it. Also, being able to write that more I think got them very excited. This new direction with this era of UWU, I think is exactly where we need to be.
Anthony: We are not getting rid of any of the other elements like the hip-hop or trap elements. We are definitely going to keep trying to incorporate those in different songs. I think us having this variety of music is just going to appeal to such a larger audience and just be able for us to kind of keep expanding and keep playing music that we just throughly enjoy. Just in general, being in a band can be kind of hard because once you get stuck in a niche you feel like you can't write these different songs because your audience is expecting a certain thing. I think with Unhealthy While Unhinged specifically, our main goal is to try and incapsulate as many people as we can with as many different genres as we can fit into it, while still keeping the essence of what we are. I think that's going to be a really cool thing to dive into when we are leaning more into one side or the other. Whether that be really heavy with some trap elements or really catchy, inspirational with chorus's or just even a mix of the two. Even adding in some dubstep elements or something like that where we just kind of do whatever, adding low-fi. Whatever we want to do as long as we keep trying to make sure we are always mixing things up, but also keeping the same element that is ourselves. I think that's gonna be a huge thing for us.
MSM: How did the collaboration with Koly Kolgate come about? What was it like working together?
Radic: Well, Koly is a person that's been around in the Cleveland, Ohio music scene since like the early 2000s. Our whole brand, with the studio and Unhinged Studios, everything like that. We were very much like pillars in the current music scene in the Ohio area. UWU coming back, we just kind of wanted to establish ourselves more in the scene, and we already worked with Koly in other ways. He is a DJ host at one of the bigger events that's been happening here in Cleveland. It's a dance night; it's a NUCore metal dance night, kind of like an emo night but for Nu metal and goths. He used to be in a couple of other bigger projects like Trap House Rave and stuff. So just like a Cleveland local OG hero. We figured the way that our shows are very reminiscent of how some trap house raves are, and we offer some similar elements, so it felt like a really natural collab to do. Also to come back and kind of establish ourselves with a little bit of the old Cleveland history as well as us being a newer band. So we just wanted to incorporate that in. Working with him was really easy. It was one day, not even a couple of hours in the studio with Colin. I'll let Colin kind of go over how it actually was to work with him.
Colin: It was amazing; it was super easy. He was super professional and super quick about it. He had everything ready before he walked in. It was a super easy, fun couple of hours working with him. Getting to just hang out in the studio and tracking real quick. So yeah, it was really fun, really easy, and I think it came out really cool.
MSM: "Lumos" showcases an impressive blend of metal core elements. How do you feel your sound has evolved or might differ compared to previous releases?
Anthony: For me personally, since I do write the vocals and the melodies, I'll just listen to something, and I'll know almost immediately whether or not I could do something with it. The second that we wrote this chorus. I knew what the chorus sounded like; I hear it in my head. Now let me come up with the melody. I come up with the melody, and 9 times out of 10, I'll write what I call first draft lyrics. I'll just write something down and get the melody going so I can get the flow of the song. Then I'll really dive back and go into what I want this song to be about. So, there's no real reason as to what lyrics I write or why I write them. It's usually just kind of what's inspiring me about this song. Colin used to write songs, and he would label them song 1, song 2, song 3, and song 4. I was like, "No, don't do that." So what I told him to start doing was name the songs any title you want. In that, it kind of tricked his brain into naming the song what he is essentially inspired by with it. So he named the song Lumos, and that was the original title that we went with. That's kind of what I went with when I wrote the lyrics. I was like, "Ok, he was inspired by Lumos, which is light." Essentially I wrote the song about always working towards the light at the end of the tunnel, and that's kind of what it really is. I have a personal meaning as to what I write songs about. I like to write songs in a vague way to open into interruption for anyone. The song, in its essence, is all about working towards the light, working towards the end of the tunnel because you're going to get there no matter how hard it seems and no matter what life throws at you. That's kind of what the song was written about when I got down to the core. Essentially, it's usually just, "I hear thing in head and I put thing out of head through mouth," and that's it.
MSM: You've got a few show coming up in February. How are you all feeling about performing since being back? Anything in particular you're excited about?
Radic: We did probably a couple of shows leading into the release of Lumos. We always do a massive annual New Year's Eve show that we call Unhinged New Year's. We also toured into that a little bit. We had a really awesome show, a sold-out show with The Browning, Dropout Kings, and Filth a few weeks ago. So, that kind of really got the rust off, so to speak, and got us back into game day shape. We were pretty much ready to go from there. I would say these next few shows coming up, we have our Valentine Day show with emo night Kent, and we have Heavy Hitter's fest day 1. Which is the first annual festival that we are co-headlining with our guitarist Alex's other band, Terra Vista, and we have a lot of things planned for that. We fell naturally back into it, and we are just ready to get more unhinged with it. We have crazy light shows and crazy antics. I'm going to try to get Anthony to surf a legit inflatable across the crowd. We definitely have a lot of plans for stuff, but I don't know guys; correct me if I'm wrong. I feel like we haven't missed a beat when it comes to our live stuff. This was basically us getting ready for this year of touring and shows.
Anthony: Yeah, I don't think we ever really skipped a beat. I think at least for me and maybe Radic, also Alex. We've all been playing shows and been in bands for so long that at this point, playing shows no matter how long it's been always feels like second nature. Once we're back on stage, we are immediately sent to this place of peace, and this is where I belong. I think that's really it. Even shaking this rust off; it's still not even shaking the rust off, it's just being right back at home. I think that's pretty much it.
Radic: Yeah, I agree with that. It's just all natural.
Anthony: Honestly, I'd like to hear how you are Colin.
Radic: This is Colin's first like band on stage and stuff. So, like before this band ever existed, he had never played shows before or anything like that.
Colin: I think recently just on that New Year's little short tour we did and with The Browning show. The Browning was honestly the time I was like, "Ok, I settled in to this lifestyle and really feel comfortable." I was telling them before we went on stage, I don't really get those nerves or show jitters. This just feels natural to me now. I think going into 2025 I'm locked in, and I'm super excited.
MSM: Lastly, if fans take one thing away from your music right now, what do you hope it is?
Radic: Honestly, community really. I think if you look at our music as a whole, if you come to a show, if you listen to any songs, or if you take a look at any of us in any particular aspect in our lives. Realistically, the biggest thing we've been trying to do is show people that there is support and there is a sense of community there. Everybody is always welcomed in the UWU crew and stuff that we do. A lot of people are very serious when it comes to being in the music industry, or a lot of people are very serious about how they come off when they're out in a social environment. We just say, "Hey, it's ok to just be crazy, act yourself, and there's a place for you here." We write in a way where there's no rules; we do things in a way where there's no rules. We are very much accepting of everybody's goals, personalities, humor, and stuff like that. I don't know about anyone else, but the main thing I want people to take away from us, especially moving forward, is it's ok to just be yourself. There's a community here with UWU that we will be more than happy to adopt you and you can be a part of this crazy little camp that we are putting together.
Anthony: Yeah, and to add onto it. If you take anything away from our music and if you take anything away from us as people, it's not serious. Life just doesn't need to be that deep, and we're here to have fun. America sucks, we all suck, things suck right now, but, like I said, with Lumos, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and there's a light guiding us. In general, if there's anything you take away from it and take away from us, is to be yourself. Be yourself unforgivably because, at the end of the day, that's all you have. Honestly, if there's one thing that my mom taught me that still sticks with me, is to be true to yourself because that's all you really have, and do it! Be whatever you want to be; be who you are. It doesn't matter what these people think because UWU accepts you no matter what. I don't even know how to get more than that, yeah!
Radic: Colin?
Colin: I got nothing else. That was perfect!
Radic: Yeah, be yourself. You got one life to live; live it. People don't fuck with that, you know UWU does. So we're over here, let's go have some fun.
