Interview by Chris Martin

Despite having been around for several years, OVER UNITY is a band that feels it is just getting started. Now ready to unleash their debut EP, Collide The Space, the band members have their eyes firmly targeted on making themselves a key part of Perth’s music scene. Musically the band is treading some familiar ground, drawing from the template seemingly created by KARNIVOOL, COG and DEAD LETTER CIRCUS.

“That’s not to say that Over Unity are copycats”, claimed lead singer/guitarist Joe Dignon. “We’ve obviously been fans of those bands since we were quite young, but we like to take influences from all over the place. We try to get out of the mould and have more melodic parts and ambient parts. We experiment with rhythms as well.”

Dignon explains that the band’s song writing process is quite straightforward however the end product of the process can be quite unique. “I think the way that we write songs is that we come up with an idea and then we expand on it and find things that fit together with it. Some of our songs are a bit more repetitive than others and some are longer and more progressive, almost like a story or a film score.”

Like their heroes, Over Unity don’t follow the standard lead/rhythm guitar template. According to Dignon the approach that he and fellow guitarist Ben Caraciolo take is more about ambience. “We never really split lead and rhythm. Because I’m singing often I’m playing something more rhythmic so I can sing over it. Ben likes to use a lot more effects than I do. He uses a lot of weird sounds like ring modulation. He’s also been known to filter out the high end of his tone and that creates a more piano-like sound.”

Described by themselves as making ‘forward moving music’. Dignon claimed that his lyrics fit this mould as well and could be looked upon as ‘forward thinking’.

“The general theme of the EP is progression”, he goes on to say. “It starts off with a song based around religion, getting people to get out of their false hopes. It then progresses on to thinking about getting back to the roots of childhood innocence. Lucid Dreams is about personal development and not having to get into everyday pressures.”

With many bands now following in Karnivool’s enormous footsteps, Dignon said Over Unity has several peers in the local scene. “We’ve got quite a few mates in other bands, like FURTHER EARTH. We knew them when they were in bands like Rise Apollo and Dekannen. We played shows with OROGENY last year. They’re in a similar vibe to us. We don’t really discriminate between styles but we obviously can’t play shows with every band.”