Unholy
- Story by Kevin Stewart-Panko
Hardcore lifer Jonathan Dennison makes certain history doesn’t repeat
If American Hardcore author Steven Blush ever retracts his statement that hardcore died in 1986 and decides to pen a book about ’90s hardcore, Jonathan Dennison should not only feature highly but eventually become a household name in houses where roommates argue over misplaced Integrity albums and Earth Crisis hoodies instead of who forgot to pay the fucking water bill. Dennison has slung six-strings and written the majority of material for the likes of Path of Resistance, Another Victim, the Promise and Santa Sangre and doesn’t seem to be one bit perturbed that he’s never been given his due, especially since, as he puts it, “Santa Sangre gets ripped off a lot these days.” In fact, he’s used to being overlooked, though with Unholy, Jonathan’s taken cautious steps to avoid any stalled momentum that might interfere with the goal of becoming a full-time touring band.
“Half of it is that I just love writing music and I was itching to do a project I could go all out with,” he explains. “I’ve always wanted to go all out with a band and the biggest difference between now and past bands is that we never had solid lineups that really connected. The bands that stick around for a long time are usually very close with each other; there’s an understanding between members and they have a system that works. With Unholy, we’ve spent a little more time with the lineup, making sure it’s solid and learning from past mistakes.”
You can hear this kinship and togetherness in the 12 songs that make up Unholy’s debut full-length, Blood of the Medusa. It’s a concept album that chronicles humanity’s failure to learn from previous mistakes during societal rebuilding after the Sun fizzes out. The music propelling this concept is tight, bludgeoning, metallic hardcore. Thunderous riffs that remind of the early ’90s Roadrunner roster kick clean singing to the curb; vintage Agnostic Front/Cro-Mags breakdowns shave off side-swept haircuts; there are even Integrity references and a couple killer leads thrown in for good measure. This is the sound of scene veterans—including ex-members of Godbelow—who’ve somehow kept the fire stoked all these years.
“Basically this is what Santa Sangre should’ve been,” says Dennison. “After doing the Promise, I was really itching to do something more metal, more personal and darker. I actually started writing for Unholy towards the end of that band, though it took me a while to get off the ground. Unholy is a lot of fun because it’s more personal. If you do a hardcore band, 90 percent of the time it has to fall into a certain style or category. With this, we didn’t care what anyone thought of it. We knew it’d be semi-decent just because of what naturally comes out of us, but we weren’t following any guidelines. We just wrote what we knew.”
