The Union Underground emerged with its debut album, “… An Education in Rebellion,” in 2000 as part of a new wave of hard rock and metal bands that quickly dominated the charts and festival lineups, many of which are still among the scene’s biggest acts in 2024. But while The Union Underground found success, particularly with the single “Turn Me On ‘Mr. Deadman’” and with WWE using “Across the Nation” as the theme song for its flagship show “Monday Night Raw” from 2002 to 2006, a second album never followed. The band broke up in 2002, and more than a decade passed before a new incarnation formed to play sporadic live shows over the next few years. But now The Union Underground finally seems serious about becoming an active band again and is set to take part in the Back to the 2000s Tour with Soil, Ra and Flaw. More live dates are scheduled for later in 2024, and there are promises of—at long last—new music on the way. A few weeks before the tour’s kickoff, Live Metal’s Greg Maki got all the details from frontman Bryan Scott.
LIVE METAL: The Back to the 2000s Tour is coming up—The Union Underground, Soil, Ra and Flaw. This is right up my alley. I think I’m part of the target audience for this, because in the early 2000s I was in my early 20s, and this was the music I was listening to when I was kind of finding my place, finding my way in the world. What can the fans expect to see at these shows?
BRYAN SCOTT: We’re pretty much focused on playing everyone’s first release. All of the bands involved are going to play their first record in its entirety and, of course, sprinkle some newer songs around. But that’s kind of the theme of it, to go back to how it all started, which is kind of cool. Because 2001-2002 was when all of us put out our first releases. The Union one was in 2000, Soil I think 2001 and, also, Ra was in 2001. It’s going to be fun for everyone to revisit the reason we got involved in this to begin with.
Do you know all those bands from that time?
I’ve known the Soil guys for years, but I never met any of the guys in Ra back in the day. I think we did some shows that Flaw was on, but I never got to really mingle with them. So it’s going to be nice to meet all of those guys for the first time, as well.
The tour starts March 1 in San Antonio. Is that still home base for you?
Yep, San Antonio, Texas. Yeah, that is by design. (laughs)
So the last show you played was the Blue Ridge Rock Festival in 2022.
Yeah, luckily we did 2022 and not 2023, right? (laughs)
Yeah, luckily that was the one I went to, too, and I really enjoyed your set. How did that go down for you?
The setup, everything was so spread out. It’s hard to check out all the stages if you want to get around to all the bands that you’re there for. It’s kind of a crazy setup, that whole thing. But we had a great time, man. It was a good set. It was the first time I had been to Virginia in a long time, so that was fun. And kind of outside of the setup for the day we were able to do our own meet-and-greet right there after we played, right next to the stage. The way they had it set up, which a lot of bands complained about, the merch booth was way over at the main stage regardless of where everyone was playing. So it was a very strange setup in that regard, because you’re not able to mingle with people and chill out and sign stuff right after you play, next to the stage you’re at. So kind of at the last minute, we were like, “Hey, man, can we just set up our own thing here and do a meet-and-greet off the cuff right after our set right at the side of the stage?” And it was fantastic. There was hundreds of people in line. It took two and a half hours. It was really nice. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to do it. So it was nice to connect with everyone at the show in that way, for sure.
How long has it been since you were out on a full tour?
With Union, 2003. So quite a while. Over the last few years, we’ve been doing festivals here and there, so just one-offs and fly-in dates. So this is the first full run in many years.
What are you most looking forward to about being out on tour again?
I like the grind. It can be exhausting, but I do like the daily grind of that. I miss that. And just interacting with fans at the end of the night is always a special thing. I like to hear about the things that move people about us, about the music. I like to chat with fans to a fault, really. (laughs) Sometimes you’re like, “Man, we have to cut this off. You can’t sit here all night. We’ve gotta get out of here.” But I enjoy that. So that’s going to be fun, just connecting. There’s a lot of diehard fans still, and it’ll be nice to reconnect with a lot of them.
This early 2000s time period that you’re going to be celebrating on this tour—as a music fan, it was a really exciting time with all these new bands coming out. What was it like being in the thick of it?
So we were on the 2001 Ozzfest, which is kind of known for the best Ozzfest lineup ever. And it was exactly what you’re referring to. Everyone’s first records were coming out—Disturbed, Linkin Park, Drowning Pool, Papa Roach, Mudvayne, Union Underground. All of these bands were just getting it going. You could really feel that movement, especially on that tour, and the timing was perfect for the feeling of a new sound.
I can’t think of many bands, especially from that era, where you put one album—34 minutes long—and here we are, 24 years later, and like you said, there are still diehard fans and a demand for your band. What do you think it is about those songs and that album that has continued to resonate with people over the years?
I think that record, like a lot of people’s first records, had several years of writing put into your first record. There’s a lot of mishaps along the way, like experimenting with something and it doesn’t really work, and then you experiment with another thing. You’re trying to find your sound. The cool thing about that record is it’s a very eclectic collection of songs. No two songs sound the same, and it’s kind of because of that. We didn’t say, “Hey, let’s get in the studio, and in the next six weeks, we’ll write a bunch of stuff and be done with it.” When you have that method, a lot of it tends to sound the same. But when you have time, you end up with results like that, where there was a three-month period where I was experimenting with this kind of stuff, and then the next couple months I was doing this type of thing. So it’s a cool collection of those little timeframes put onto one piece of art. I think that’s why it still resonates, like you said, because it’s not a “let me find the song that was on the radio” kind of record. You can really put it on and listen from front to back. And that’s the biggest compliment I get about that record. I love when people say that, like “Man, I can put that record on and just not skip anything.”
People definitely put you into that nu metal category, but as you were saying, no two songs sound alike, and I hear all kinds of different sounds and influences. Some of my favorites—“Killing the Fly” is very Alice-in-Chainsy; “The Friend Song” is very punk rock; and then my favorite one is “Revolution Man,” which to me is just epic. What are your favorite songs on that album?
Well, you kind of named them there. “Killing the Fly” and “Revolution Man” are two of my absolute favorites, for sure. “South Texas Deathride” and “Turn Me On ‘Mr. Deadman’” and all that stuff—those are fan favorites, but I like the deeper cuts, as they say, of “Killing the Fly” and “Revolution Man,” for sure. The Alice in Chains influence is very obvious on some of that stuff. I was a huge Alice in Chains fan and still am.
Do you find that the songs still hold a lot of personal meaning to you today, or is it more of a time capsule of where you were back then?
Some of them do. A lot of times when you finish a piece of work, maybe it’s therapeutic to get it out and it’s comforting to get it down in words, and then you perform it night after night after night—for years a lot of times—you tend to let all that stuff go. So you can get to a point where you’re on repeat. If you always connected too deeply with it every time you performed it, you would have a complete breakdown. (laughs) You have to learn how to shut it off a little bit so you can function as a human. A lot of those songs, even just rehearsing them, it always takes you back to that moment when you put pen to paper for those things. So a huge part of my existence, that album.
One of the things that probably gave the band the most exposure and kind of kept the band alive for a few years after the album cycle was done was “Across the Nation” being used by WWE. Was that song written for them?
It was written specifically for that project. How it worked was the compilation that that’s on, WWE—I guess they were F at the time—they approached everyone about doing covers of each wrestler’s theme song, and that’s kind of how that project came together. All the bands involved were assigned a certain wrestler, and you were supposed to cover those songs. I got the track and I didn’t feel that it was really something that I could get involved in, because it’s a wrestling thing and clearly the lyrics are a little silly, and it wouldn’t be something that you would write yourself. But they were generous enough to let me take just a piece of the music, not use any of the lyrics, take the bassline from the intro and write a whole new song around it. It was nice that they allowed us to be involved in it, even though not really following the protocol. I was sending little clips as I was working on it so I would know that I was not wasting too much of my time, and they were like, “Man, this is fantastic. It has nothing to do with the wrestler or the lyrics of the theme, but we love it.” Ultimately, they used that as the theme song for the entire show for years.
Yeah, you would hear it several times throughout the show every week.
Yeah, it was nice that we were able to get a real Union Underground-sounding song on that compilation.
What would you say has been the highlight for you with this band over the years?
Wow, we did so much stuff in such a short time. We did a festival with Stone Temple Pilots and Deftones in Florida, and I don’t remember where it was, but we had a fantastic place in the set where we played right before Stone Temple Pilots, and they were headlining the thing. They had a two-stage setup, and Deftones played after Stone Temple Pilots, but it was two main stages together. There was just something magical about that night. I’ll never forget about it. I’ve mentioned it several times. We had a fantastic set. We were right before STP. There was 100,000 people there. It was one of those perfect nights where everything went right. Our crew was perfect that night. And I’m a huge STP fan, so I got to meet those guys and hang out with them and then watch their show, which I hadn’t seen them live before. I got to do my thing, take care of that business and then be a fan the rest of the night, and I’ll just never forget that. It was fantastic. I went from being onstage to crowdsurfing with everybody the rest of the night while STP was playing. So just a big kid moment.
So as a big STP fan, and you mentioned being an Alice in Chains fan, do a lot of your musical influences come from the ‘90s?
Yeah, for sure. And more so on the vocal side. Musically, I love a lot of the ‘70s and ‘80s, as well. But yeah, once I got into singing and writing, I was so ready for the ‘80s to be over. I was very influenced by the ‘90s, for sure.
What does the future hold for The Union Underground after this tour?
We’re gonna finish this up and then take the rest of the summer to finish new music and then hopefully release something by late 2024. There will definitely be something out. I can’t commit to how much of it we’ll release. It’s a new world. There’s a lot of ways to get things released these days, and sometimes putting out a full record isn’t the best way to do it, unfortunately because I miss those days. So that’s the plan. We’re gonna take the summer to finish some of that stuff, and then we’re doing a U.K. run in November, which has not been announced yet, so I can’t reveal all of the details, but it will involve Soil again. So that’s gonna be a lot of fun. And we’ll probably do a couple of festivals, just kind of one-offs, this year. But other than that, the main focus is finishing up new music.
Awesome. I’m sure a lot of people will be excited about that. They’ve been waiting a long time.
Yeah, 20 years between records.
That’s nothing. (laughter)
Yeah. We’ll do number three another 20 from now. It’ll be fantastic, just a whole lifespan—three records, 60 years. (laughter)
Is there anything else you’d like to say before we go?
Just that if you’re looking for us or want to know more about the tour or anything Union related—theunionunderground.com. You can find anything you need there—streaming, social media stuff, tour dates—all the goods.
LINKS:
www.theunionunderground.com
www.facebook.com/theunionundergroundofficial
www.x.com/theuuofficial
www.instagram.com/theuuofficial
www.youtube.com/@theunionundergroundofficial
The Union Underground on Apple Music
The Union Underground on Spotify
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