I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: September 4, 2025] UnityTX

I was under the impression that MSPaint was the only opening band for this show (and I thought I might get home by like 11).  Then this afternoon I found out that UnityTX was also opening.  I’d never heard of them.  I listened to a bit of a song and heard that they were very heavy and rather screamy.  So I was ready with earplugs in.

And then they came out on stage and proceeded to rip the roof off the place.  Even though I didn’t know them, their sound was so much more alive than MSPaint’s.  Was it because there was a guitarist instead of a synth?  Or maybe it was because lead singer Jay Webster had stage presence galore.

He got people to do a circle pit, he got the audience to sing along and to even have a right side/left side “battle.”

We were on the side of bassist Kendrick Nicholson whose low end was amazing.  Kendrick also added some intense backing vocals.   I couldn’t really see guitarist Ricky Cova until he bounced around the stage, but his sharp and heavy guitar sound was fantastic.

I’ll be a little prudish and say there were too many f words in the songs–but It was more just overuse that made the lyrics seem less powerful.

But like Rage Against the Machine, they repeated parts a lot, which made it easy to sing along to.

They had a lot of rap components that worked perfectly with the beats that drummer Jonathan Flores was playing.

I think they’d be a lot of fun to see again.  After I grabbed a Poppy shirt, there was no real line at the UnityTX merch stand so I told them they kicked ass and got a fist bump from Webster.

Possible setlist (first four songs are correct)

1. WORLD OF MALICE ∞
2. PLAYING FAVORITES ♦
3. CROSS ME ⊗
4. HEINOUS
5. BANG SH!T ⊗
6. HAIL MARY ⊗
7. DIAMOND DIEZ ∞
8. RUCKUS ⊗
9. ROC SH!T ∞