Interview: Ben Champion (Unburier)

Interview: 26th February 2026

Ahead of the release of their new EP As Time Awaits (review here), Hotel Hobbies spent some time in the company of Unburier vocalist / guitarist Ben Champion. We spoke about the band's journey so far, writing new music, playing live and his future hopes for Unburier.

Hotel Hobbies: Thinking about the time from the release of the last EP, Nebulous, to now, what has the journey for the band been like since then?

Ben Champion: We had one line-up change with our new drummer. I suppose the big difference is that our bassist joined when Nebulous was already really written. He came in last minute, wrote his parts and recorded them quickly and joined the band. So the new EP is definitely the most collaborative we have ever been as a band. In some ways, it was a tougher writing process. I think the core of the riff writing has always been Blake and me. So it didn't change the initial processes too much. It made it a bit different after the fact if that makes sense.

Hotel Hobbies: Receiving As Time Awaits to review made me go back and explore the rest of your music too. I really enjoyed the previous EP, Nebulous, but it feels like with each release, you have stepped up.

Ben Champion: I think that's always the goal, right? We're always pushing ourselves to be better in whatever sense that is. This time round, we were trying to focus a lot on bigger hooks and a bigger chorus. We're never going to be a sing-along band but we wanted something that is going to get stuck in your head. We were trying to dial back on the technicality. I am not saying we failed because there are simpler sections but I don’t think we realised how technical it was until we started recording it.

Hotel Hobbies: There does seem to be a balance between the brutal, the technical and the memorable on the new EP.

Ben Champion: Yes, you do want to balance things but I think it is more subconscious. When writing, you just have to go with gut instinct. Another thing we wanted to do this time was to make the vocals really pop.

Hotel Hobbies: I think the production on the album is excellent. There is some heavy stuff but you can really hear everything that is going on.

Ben Champion: Definitely. That was a massive goal for us. We have a fretless bass so we wanted to make sure it was present in the mix but where you could separate it from the guitars. My goal with the vocals was to enunciate as well as I can. I want clear and concise but packing a punch.

Hotel Hobbies: It was interesting comparing listening through speakers and listening on headphones. There is a lot of layering within the music and I picked up new things with each listen.

Ben Champion: 100%. It is not easily digestible music and I think the goal is we want people to listen to it again and give it a chance.

Hotel Hobbies: I think some of it comes down to the way people listen to music now. I like to listen to albums as albums or EPs as EPs. Some listeners today do not have the patience to develop a deeper understanding of what is happening in the music.

Ben Champion: That’s a really good point. It isn’t casual listening. You have to sit with it and take it in for what it is.

Hotel Hobbies: Over the time the band has been together, you have released a series of singles and EPs. Would you like to release a full-length album at some point?

Ben Champion: That has always been the goal - to do a full record. It’s tricky, mostly for financial reasons. We’re a bit older now and it’s just expensive to do it properly. We want real drums on our recordings. That’s something we really want to do. Programming drums is cheaper - and we do that for demos - but we want real drums and real performances. That takes studio time, and studio time is expensive. We do everything else at home: guitars, vocals, bass and then send it off for mixing. Originally, we were aiming for a full-length but we were working with a booking agent/manager who pushed us toward releasing singles. We thought we’d try it and put them out.

Unfortunately, we can’t rush things. Our music isn’t easy to turn around quickly. We had songs taking shape, chose three, then had to rehearse and refine them, even with the demos already there. There’s always more work you can do. Releasing them as single, single, single helped spread out the time. Meanwhile, we’ve been writing and looking further into the future. A full-length is still the goal. It’ll let us challenge ourselves more. We’ve got our current sound - which is very in-your-face - but it’ll be good to experiment again. On Twisted, we used clean guitars and other ideas but those haven’t reappeared much in the recent tracks. Going forward, we want a record with fast, slow, mid‑paced moments, clean sections - space to experiment. With just three‑song releases, you don’t feel you have room to experiment as much. A single has to be concise and immediate. On a full-length, you can have the big bangers but also the tracks where you experiment more, which creates its own flow.

Hotel Hobbies: One thing you don’t compromise on is lyrics. There is lot of philosophy and cosmic dread. You go deep into those themes which can help add to your identity.

Ben Champion: For sure. I’m the vocalist but I don’t tend to write all the lyrics. I help with lyric patterns. Stan and Blake both contributed this time. We get together, work out phrasing, decide what doesn’t feel right, cut lines and come up with new ones. In my opinion, this is our strongest lyrical work so far. Compared to the previous two releases, these lyrics are great and we worked really hard on the patterns to make sure things stick in your head.

Hotel Hobbies: Earlier you mentioned enunciation and even with some of the more guttural moments, the words are often very understandable.

Ben Champion: That was a big goal of mine. My favourite vocalists - Chuck from Death, Josh Middleton from Sylosis and Dave Davidson from Revocation - all use a mid-range vocal style where, even if you can’t decipher every word, the syllables pop and the accents land right. During recording, Stan pushed me hard. If something wasn’t hitting, he’d say to try it again and make individual syllables pop.

Hotel Hobbies: Talking about some of the tracks themselves, Continuum has a very angular feel to the riffs but the bass is also very articulate. How do you make sure with so much going on, everything has its place without any confusion?

Ben Champion: Especially with the bass, there’s a lot of back-and-forth. I’ll often sit with Stan while he’s playing bass, and we’ll work through ideas together. In person, you can bounce ideas and lay a foundation. There’s plenty of push and pull. Ideas get scrapped or reshaped. We’re always trying to balance things. Sometimes, Stan has an idea; other times, one of us will sing or hum a bassline to spark a direction. It’s really about working together, listening back and being critical of your own work. With vocals, the music is mostly already written, so you’re putting patterns on top of something existing and trying to make them work around it. We’re conscious of avoiding obvious clashes - guitars doing one thing while vocals are doing something conflicting. The bass acts as the translator between guitars and drums, gluing it all together. We’re proud of how it ended up.

Hotel Hobbies: Abyssal Uncertainty  feels like a panic attack in musical form. How do you make sure that in something so intense and complex, you don’t lose the emotional core?

Ben Champion: It’s tough. Abyssal is fast, technical and a lot to take in. We didn’t fully appreciate just how intense and in-your-face it was until later. The key is knowing there still needs to be moments where it pulls back. In the pre‑chorus, for example, you drop the chords and rock on the octave, opening it back up. Even though the music isn’t hugely dynamic, that shift gives it a sense of space - going from articulate picking to a wider section. There are also elements in that song we’d never tried before. And the chorus, even with a lot of notes, is still melodic. Balancing all of that was the focus.

Hotel Hobbies: Reading the notes that came with the EP, you mentioned some of your older influences. I felt the aggression of earlier bands in there but with modern production and refinement.

Ben Champion: That’s always been what we aim for, whether we’ve nailed it in the past or not. On a full-length, we’ll be pushing that even more and really honing the style.

Hotel Hobbies: On Survive the Vermin you have a story of an immortal warrior. One thing that comes across in your vocals is the mood - the internal conflict. You can feel the character’s journey through your delivery. It creates quite a cinematic effect.

Ben Champion: I’m glad that comes through. There’s a lot of passion in that performance. When I’m recording, I’m giving it everything. When it returns to the verse, he’s just destroying everything in his path. He’s on his arc. It ties together nicely. That was a big goal: to have lyrics that give the EP an all‑encompassing theme.

Hotel Hobbies: How will you continue to challenge yourself musically going forward?

Ben Champion: We would like to push boundaries by experimenting with things we’ve touched on previously - more clean sections, for example. We also want to write something properly slow - not just half‑time like Survive the Vermin - but a big stompy groove. Technical songs are fun but live, they can be a lot for the audience and for us. It’d be good to mix in those slower moments for contrast and flow. When we build a set, we’re always thinking about transitions. Having something that’s even slower would help with that. But ultimately, we’ll keep doing our thing and see where it takes us.

Hotel Hobbies: Speaking of playing live, you have a gig with Cryptic Shift this Saturday. How are you feeling about introducing some of these new songs?

Ben Champion: It’s going to be great. Cryptic Shift have been long‑time friends of ours. They’ve helped us a lot. Ryan, their drummer, has always been supportive - giving us advice, helping us out. They’ve taken us out on shows before, got us onto gigs when we were younger, helped us around our hometown and beyond. They’re great guys. It should be a fun night. We’ve played Survive the Vermin once, last August! That shows how long this music has been done; Vermin’s video was wrapped up recently, but the recording was last May, nearly a year ago. The new material is tricky but we’ve been rehearsing and feeling good. Looking forward to debuting it and seeing how it goes down live.

Hotel Hobbies: I’m interviewing Xander and Ryan from Cryptic Shift on Monday, so I’ll hear what it was like from their side after the weekend!

Ben Champion: Excellent!

Hotel Hobbies: Further blending old and new is the band’s logo and the artwork for As Time Awaits.

Ben Champion: The artwork is a metaphor - someone in a cave trying to escape. We worked with Fernando - he also did Nebulous. We were looking through his work and got really into the idea of eyes. He brought that idea to life. Once he sketched it, we thought it needed a character walking through. We didn’t know whether he should be dying or something else, but Fernando drew this cloaked figure and it looked great. If you look closely, the cave has eyes and teeth. The whole thing has an old‑school feel because it’s hand‑painted. That’s exactly what we wanted.

Hotel Hobbies: Looking back over everything you’ve done with the band, and even personally, what led you toward this style of music as you were growing up? You mentioned a couple of bands already but which ones really pulled you in that direction?

Ben Champion: That was down to my Dad really. My earliest memories of music are hearing Metallica’s Black Album in the car. I grew up around metal without realising how much I liked it. When I got my first iPod, the first song I downloaded with an iTunes gift card was For Whom the Bell Tolls. When I was eleven or twelve, I decided I wanted to learn guitar. That changed how I listened to music. Suddenly, I was aware of everything happening in the songs. Later, my dad gave me his iPod loaded with Slayer, Pantera and loads of other bands. That was it for me. I realised this was the music I really loved. As I got better at guitar, my taste evolved. I went through a really technical phase. The more I learned, the more demanding the music I wanted to listen to became. But over the last year, I’ve gone back a bit. Not back to basics but I’ve rediscovered how satisfying a big heavy riff can be. It’s funny how your tastes loop around like that.

Hotel Hobbies: Over the time you have grown as a musician, what has been your most valuable lesson?

Ben Champion: It might sound simple, but honestly: not giving up. I started this band when I was young, with school friends. We played some shows, put out a demo before Twisted and had a good time. But things changed. People didn’t want to keep going. I just kept trying. I kept looking for the right people and kept pushing the band forward. Eventually, by not stopping, you find the right line-up and the right momentum. If the goal is to get somewhere, you can’t get there if you stop moving. You also have to be a bit ruthless. We want this, so we do what needs to be done - making videos, promoting the releases, travelling further to record drums with someone we really wanted to work with. Every release, we’ve pushed a bit deeper and stepped things up.

Hotel Hobbies: Thank you so much for spending time talking with me today. Good luck with the release and I hope Saturday’s show goes really well.

Ben Champion: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it and your interest.

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