THE OTHER SIDE

For a man who’s rapidly become the figurehead for the goth and post-punk revival that’s been creeping ever deeper into the metal underground, Unto Others frontman Gabriel Franco is far from the arch, cryptic creature of the night you might expect. Sitting in his Portland study and talking to Hammer over Zoom, he’s good-natured and utterly unpretentious, but you can sense a restlessness, too. After all the uncontainable, grassroots buzz and critical acclaim that greeted their 2019 debut album, Mana – released under their former name, Idle Hands – leading to a tour supporting King Diamond and becoming Roadrunner labelmates with Slipknot, Trivium and Gojira, he’s clearly still trying to figure out the round hole he’s found himself fitting into.

“I’m extremely cynical,” he says, “so my first thought when we were getting all this attention was, ‘Oh god, are we the new hype