Sometimes the best things lie off the beaten path. It’s a truth proved by UnMasked, who creates music defying preconceived notions of genre— rallying the underdogs and the outcasts around them in the process. Feels Like Home is the latest result of that bold approach, an album that offers something for everyone with its unique blend of hard rock and hip-hop, bridged by strong melodies. Josh Pittman (vocals, guitar), Jeremiah “Zer0” Coleman (rap vocals) and Jeff Bartlett (drums) went all in on the 11 tracks that comprise Feels Like Home, investing their own personal experiences and enlisting the expertise of industry veterans like audio engineer Paul Lipinksy (Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park) and cellist Tate Olsen (Skillet, Cellofourte). This is the third independently created and released album that the Florida-based band has released since 2017, a relentless creative pace that has refined their process as a band. “With this being the third project we’ve worked on, we have really been able to structure out our tracks and continue to refine what we think is going to make the best product,” Jeff shares. The resulting songs range from the electrifying “Fahrenheit” to the melodic, poignant “Feels Like Home” (featuring Tate Olsen’s cello work). UnMasked lists their influences as ranging from bands like Skillet and Thousand Foot Krutch to Eminem and NF, and that diversity is evident when moving from rocker “Ain’t My Game” to beat-centric tracks like “Updown” to the smooth, danceable “Yeah.” Feels Like Home plays like an update on classic rapcore, with slicker production but that same punchy progression between melodies, riffs and bars. The band leans into this diversity. Josh explains, “I want to be the band that someone hears on Spotify or Pandora and says ‘I’ve never heard that before, that must be UnMasked.” Wherever they land in a given moment with their diverse sound, UnMasked’s songs are unified by a message of hope for the outsider, the hurting, the rejected. True to their name, the band foregoes masks in the interest of solidarity. That relatable honesty drives songs like poignant “Feel For Me” and raw “Possibilities.” “If I were to distill it simply, I would want our listeners to know that they’re not alone,” Zer0 says frankly. “There are other people in the world who are weird, outcast, abandoned, and we all go through things. But we can be there for each other. Life doesn’t have to be a single player struggle.”