JESUS CHRIST, I LOVE YOU

I don’t believe in G-d. If I ever did believe in G-d, I’d imagine that she is played by Alanis Morissette. I’ve had a pretty complex journey with my faith. Technically, I’m a born Jew (thanks ma!) but my dad was confirmed Catholic, so that’s how I lived the first five years of my life before raising me Catholic apparently proved too difficult for my parents and our family became some kind of basic-bitch Christian (the phrasing they use is “non-denominational”). When I was seven years old, they had me go on a playdate with a girl I knew from church, whose parents would not let us watch The Land Before Time because something something dinosaur fossils were put here by Satan to trick us into thinking the earth is older than 6,000 years. I love dinosaurs with every fiber of my being, which meant that I lost a lot of interest in religion right around then. In high school, I got more in touch with my Jewish roots (to the point where, in my sophomore year in college, I nearly joined a Jewish fraternity) before eventually realizing that I didn’t need a G-d in my life.

All this to say, I wasn’t introduced to Underoath as “the heavy band that was okay for Christians to like.” I came to them through the music scene as a whole, and have always engaged with their music and lyrics on a secular level. I do find it rather interesting that they are perhaps the band most responsible for bringing Christian heavy music to the mainstream; I suspect this is because their lyrics, after their debut, became introspective and abstract enough to appeal to anyone who was going through inner turmoil. They are also from Florida, which was also the home of perhaps the best Christian hardcore band, the almighty Strongarm, so they really just have that good-enough-to-be-secular blood running through their veins.

Ultimately, I think of Underoath not as a Christian band, but as a band that was always pushing their sound to its farthest reaches, from their beginning as what was essentially the first blackened deathcore band through their ascendance to chart domination to their newest incarnation as some combination of pop-metalcore and Linkin Park-indebted hard rock. Underoath is a band that means a lot of things to a lot of people, and it would be wrong of me to presume that I could write an article distilling all of those things. So instead, here’s an article about the most important thing about Underoath: their music. I’ll probably also throw in some self-indulgent bullshit about what they mean to me personally, but take that with a grain of salt. Underoath is our lord and savior.

BURDEN IN YOUR HANDS

Underoath began in the sleepy town of Ocala, Florida (soon to be home of easycore heroes A Day to Remember) as a collaboration between vocalist Dallas Taylor and guitarist Luke Morton. Aaron Gillespie was recruited as drummer through their church friendship (Gillespie had often been told that his drumming was terrible and too loud, which is wonderfully ironic, given that his extremely tasteful and innovative drumming style would drive much of Underoath’s evolution as time went on). Eventually, Morton dropped out of the band, to be replaced by bassist Octavio Fernandez and guitar wizard Corey Steger. This incarnation of the band is the one that recorded their first album, 1999’s Act of Depression, released on Takehold Records while all the members were still in high school.

Act of Depression is an odd beast, even given the band’s earliest predilections towards death and black metal. The songs are extremely long, often hovering around 6 or 7 minutes (“A Love So Pure” and the title track both crack 10 minutes). The production isn’t great– clinical and flat, the guitar riffs are not all that powerful, and Gillespie’s drum sound is missing the extremely full and tight sound that would later become one of Underoath’s hallmarks. The lyrics are also much more blatantly “Christian” than the band would ever dare to go later on. “Burden In Your Hands,” one of the musical standouts, is blatantly pro-life, while “Innocence Stolen” is a plea for God to punish child molesters and rapists. It’s a little embarrassing, to say the least.

Still, the riffs are there, gnarled and nasty and evil in a way that is reminiscent of Yesterday Is Time Killed-era Eighteen Visions; the trudging and twisted main riff in the title track gives way to a death’n’roll-esque stomp that echoes the bluesy death metal leanings of Entombed’s Wolverine Blues, which stands in stark contrast to the way that “A Love So Pure” descends into straight-up melodic worship music during its climax.

Special attention must be paid to Dallas Taylor, the nucleus of Underoath’s early work, and the beating heart that pumps through the rest of the sound. His screams are pulpy and gross, expressive and emotive, powerful and imbued with a weight far beyond his years. His range is also incredible, as his lows are closer to the guttural, testosterone-driven style of NYDM bands like Suffocation, and he is still able to push his voice into the higher-registered shrieks that would become much more prominent on their second, more black-metal-influenced LP. The moments where he lapses into spoken word are also extremely expressive and even foreboding. The ending of the title track also features a screaming performance that echoes the anguished Holy Terror vocals of Integrity’s Dwid Hellion.

I think the bass on this record is one of its more underrated aspects. Playing with a more cleanly-distorted tone, Fernandez is able to both enhance the record’s low end and, in the sections where the bass is highlighted, display a skittering, frantic energy that is missing from much of the band’s ouvre.

“Watch Me Die,” the album’s final track, is a near-seven-minute showcase of the band’s abilities, Gillespie’s drumming functioning at peak heaviness while the guitar riffs play a darkened variation of the melodeath riffs that would define the coming years of mainstream metalcore (in fact, I think this is the song that has most in common with other pioneering melodeathcore bands like Prayer for Cleansing and Undying), while Taylor delivers his most anguished vocal performance yet. There’s lots of metal-leaning tremolo and double-bass, but it has that undefinable hardcore energy and groove. At around 5 minutes in, there’s a mocking, semi-ironic high note that echoes NWOBHM or even hair metal, but it quickly is moved past as the band goes into a high-octane section that segues into the heaviest, nastiest breakdown on the record. The last twenty seconds are a breathless sprint to the finish line, Gillespie’s panicky double-bass and fills closing the record out on an energetic note.

Of course, I would be remiss to not note the hidden track, a nine-minute acoustic number that foregrounds the speechifying of Corey Steger, who improvises a meandering and stuttering dedication to victims of rape and depression, while also pleading for the band’s fans to give themselves over to Christ. This awkward moment gives way to a saccharine and honestly kind of enjoyably bad praise song with vocals from Gillespie, foreshadowing the way his Chris Carrabba-esque pipes would gain greater prominence in Underoath’s later work.

Shortly after this album’s release, the band’s history of hectic and frequent lineup changes would soon begin; Octavio Fernandez would move to rhythm guitar, Matt Clark would join in on bass, and most importantly, the band recruited Christopher Dudley on keyboards. All of these elements would contribute to a much fuller and more powerful sound, one which would kick into full effect on their next album.

CRIES OF THE PAST

Sonically, the differences between Cries of the Past and Act of Depression are much smaller than the differences between Cries of the Past and the rest of Underoath’s discography. However, it is here that the band’s songwriting began to congeal into something altogether more focused and propulsive. The songs on Act of Depression often felt like a bunch of different heavy parts randomly stacked on top of each other. The songs on Cries of the Past, while no shorter (this album is five songs in 42 minutes), are much more centralized and, when they do deviate from their central ideas, feel progressive rather than tangential. An excellent example of this is the moment a little over halfway into opener “The Last,” where the music falls away for a mournful symphonic break that is reminiscent of the Phantasm interpolation on Entombed’s “Left Hand Path,” while Steger solos his heart out.

Despite the length of the songs, the album passes by at a breakneck pace, absolutely filled with compelling sections like the stomping climax of “Giving Up Hurts the Most” (the shortest and best song on the record), as well as completely lacking in superfluous digressions. Every song here is fine-tuned to be as sharp and heavy as it can possibly be, the production is much more full and dynamic, and the performances are much tighter. Less than a full year passed between the writing and recording processes of Act of Depression and Cries of the Past, yet Gillespie’s drumming is even tighter and more bold, while the riffs are much stronger and more varied, owing to the increased black metal influence. I think the riffs on Cries of the Past actually owe a lot to the black metal/melodeath fusion of bands like Dissection, while the drumming and vocals function as the hardcore roots that keep the energy high.

Every song on the album is filled with heavy hooks that keep your ears glued to the record– the bass interlude in “Walking Away” transitions into a disgustingly heavy trudging section before transitioning into a fast-paced riff laid over a steady, mid-tempo drum groove. There’s not a moment of dead air on the entire record– even the brief moments of acoustic reprieve, like in “Giving Up Hurts the Most” and “Walking Away,” are often heavy in their own way. If all black metal sounded like this, it might actually be a genre worth paying attention to.

Dallas Taylor’s vocals are the strongest link on the record. Everything I said about his performance on Act of Depression applies here, only much more polished and impressive. His lows are particularly impressive, managing to be emotive and menacing all at the same time.

Another thing I find particularly impressive on this album is the consistent, heart-pounding intensity and energy. “And I Dreamt of You” is perhaps the best example– at over 11 minutes, it is by far the longest song that Underoath has ever written, and yet every moment is imbued with a level of urgency that highlights the song’s heaviness. The “acoustic section gives way to unbearably heavy riff” trick is employed to its greatest effect on this song, only three minutes in, and it refuses to let up the entire song. At about the four-and-a-half minute mark, the song also introduces the most breathlessly melodic riff on the album, a shot in the arm that carries through the next minute or so, with some of the most intricate guitar counterpoints in Underoath’s career (a tactic that would be employed with a more post-hardcore panache on later albums like Define the Great Line).

I also have to mention the addition of Christopher Dudley– as a keyboardist, his greatest moments were yet to come, but it is impressive how well his gentle ambience is incorporated into these heavy songs, adding a more symphonic touch and just generally improving both the atmosphere and the dynamic depths of these songs by a country mile. I have to imagine that, with bands like Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth becoming mainstream in the mid-to-late 90s, their orchestral keyboard soundscapes were a heavy influence on Cries of the Past and Dudley’s playing.

Ultimately, though, Cries of the Past is a relic of its time as much as anything. Its release date in 2000 signifies its status as the ultimate synthesis of many of the sounds being explored by metallic hardcore bands throughout the 90s (their first two albums are filled with riffs that sound like better, more polished versions of the riffs that bands like Day of Suffering, Morning Again, and Culture were hinting at). It’s unsurprising that Underoath’s earliest material has gained new resonance in the late 2010s, with bands like Wings of Kynareth (née Gnapenstob) taking much from their hybrid of death metal, black metal, and freewheeling, aggressive hardcore.

As the epic title track that closes out Cries of the Past proves, Underoath was far too creative and talented to continue straining against the confines of their metallic leanings. Metal is fundamentally a much more limited genre than hardcore, and while hardcore does inform much of Underoath’s first two albums, it’s no stretch to say that they lie far more on the metal side of the metalcore divide. Additionally, while the band was growing in popularity, they were chafing against the scene they were part of, and as Takehold was bought out by the Christian punk label Tooth & Nail, Underoath signed to its heavy music imprint, Solid State, and began to craft material that was both more indebted to hardcore than metal, and was more fearlessly melodic, painstakingly structured, and most daring of all, defiantly accessible.

SICK FROM THE MIRROR

There are many reasons that 2002’s The Changing of Times shouldn’t reside in the highest echelon of Underoath records: there was yet another lineup change (the addition of one-album-wonder William Nottke on bass as well as Tim McTague– one of the most interesting guitarists to ever play in a hardcore band– taking over for Corey Steger on lead guitar), lending a sense of instability to the proceedings; the production is a bit of a hollowed-out mess, with Taylor and Gillespie both having their vocals somewhat buried and the entire album having a much more dark and dismal atmosphere than was probably intended due to the production’s flatness; and it’s the first of several “transitional” records in Underoath’s catalog, maintaining much of the heaviness of the Dallas Taylor era while setting the stage for the thrillingly melodic heights that the band would later take with Spencer Chamberlain as frontman.

Still, The Changing of Times is an incredible record, filled to the brim with emotion and melodic invention while simultaneously boasting some of the most purely “hardcore” heavy bits in the band’s career. It’s a wild ride, so let’s go.

“When the Sun Sleeps” essentially telegraphs the change in the band’s sound from the get-go– you have Dudley’s bleep-bloops providing a vastly different atmosphere from the symphonic tones he provided on previous outings, while the guitars are less focused on riffs and much more on texture. Gillespie and Taylor both provide a hook with clean vocals, while the song’s structure itself is more compact and focused than Underoath had ever been before.

“Letting Go of Tonight” brings back the riffs somewhat, but it’s sub-two-minute length forces it to function as more of an interlude before returning to the melody with “A Message for Adrienne,” possibly Underoath’s most thrilling fusion of catchiness and heaviness yet– the way Taylor screams with a propulsive guitar harmony beneath him is nothing short of exciting, before the song barrels into a double-bass climax that brings back some of the tremolo riffing of the band’s past work and finishes out with a gentle, indie rock/emo-indebted outro, given extra texture by Taylor’s spoken-word flourishes.

“Never Meant to Break Your Heart” is one of the peaks of the album, as the band plays with crescendos and payoffs in a much more concrete way than on either of their previous albums. The deadpan, heartbroken way that Taylor intones “Sick, from the mirror” communicates such palpable self-loathing before the song launches into sections that are by turn the heaviest and most melodically haunting on the record. The big payoff is the gorgeous, keyboard-infused climax, which features Taylor’s anguished scream of “I rip my heart out,” before an extremely punishing, descending riff (accompanied by Gillespie’s most tasteful use of double-bass) closes the song out with a bang.

The title track is the most definitive synthesis of the band’s past and present sounds on the album, blending the sonic textures with confidence and aplomb. Tim McTague truly shines here with his ability to graft downright yearning guitar melodies onto music that sounds like incomplete without heart-rending screams. Underoath was never a screamo band, but that quality of supplanting melody with an unendingly desperate and extreme vocal approach is one thing that they have in common with the screamo bands of the late 90s.

“Angel Below,” while still functioning as a downright catchy rock track (that keyboard riff is incessantly sticky), brings back the death metal double-bass-and-tremolo flourishes with a renewed sense of purpose. The staccato guitar break that accompanies Taylor’s abrupt “Every time you think of me, I hope your heart dies” line is followed by one of the nastiest, most straightforwardly hardcore breakdowns the band ever wrote, and the finale of the song even brings back some of the melodeath touches that defined the first two records. I will say this song has one of the more unfortunate lyrics the band ever committed to tape– “If you could die, I’d be the one with the gun.” That hate-filled approach would give way to much more considered and therapeutic introspection after Spencer Chamberlain started to contribute lyrics, but it’s worth noting for its sheer misanthropy (and misogyny).

“The Best of Me” ushers in the back half of the album with more of the chiming, gently-distorted guitar melodies that McTague excelled at so much on this album, and also includes one of the more anguished and complex build-ups on the album. I find it interesting that the song spends so much of its back half building up to a heavy climax, only to pull the rug out from under us by taking away all of the other instrumental backing and leaving only smoke-alarm-esque beeps. The true payoff to the build-up in “The Best of Me” is the intro of its follow-up “Short of Daybreak,” which storms the gates with a breathless intro that sinks into a trudging, more straightforwardly metalcore riff, then returns to the catchiness for a brief respite before hole-punching itself with a machine-gun guitar and drum assault. The song closes out with a section that, again, fuses a Get-Up Kids-ian sense of beauty and restraint with Gillespie’s dauntingly heavy drumming prowess.

The closing track of the album, “Alone In December,” is a showcase of why the record’s production, which I initially felt was hollow and flat, was actually on asset for The Changing of Times. The songs were clearly meant to sound warmer, but the distance that the production provides gives everything an extremely icy and isolated atmosphere, which makes the melancholy and miserable vocal delivery sound all the more desperate, as if Taylor is trying to reach across the chasm between the listener and the music but can’t quite make it. “Alone In December” also functions as a microcosm of the record’s sound as a whole, ably constructing an up-and-down masterpiece in which the melody feeds off the heaviness and vice-versa. It’s not so much that they are integrated into each other as well as on Underoath’s next album, 2004’s breakthrough They’re Only Chasing Safety, but that the separation of the two elements and the way they struggle but inevitably succeed to reconcile is part of the record’s ultimate charm.

The album has its own epilogue in the short, electronic-driven instrumental “814 Stops Today,” another cold and bleak track that stands at a sharp remove from emotion, yet in its brief length manages to convey a sense of longing. I think this track is something of a thesis statement for The Changing of Times as a whole– sad and held at arm’s length while searching for a comfort it cannot find. Ironically, that’s what’s most comforting to me when I listen.

YOUNG AND ASPIRING

Following an appearance on the 2003 edition of Warped Tour as well as another lineup change that could have gutted the band entirely (Dallas Taylor was replaced as frontman by tortured soul Spencer Chamberlain, in an exit mired by rumor and uncertainty, while Octavio Fernandez and William Nottke were replaced by James Smith on guitar and Grant Brandell on bass, respectively), They’re Only Chasing Safety not only feels like a completely different band, it might as well have been one. Only Aaron Gillespie remained from the band’s initial lineup, and had taken on an even more prominent role as clean vocalist, foreshadowing his time as frontman of the rough-edged pop-punk band the Almost. However, instead of changing their name (which was considered as an option) or simply imploding, the band committed to the catchier direction that steered the course on The Changing of Times and soldiered on.

Many of these songs were written while Dallas Taylor was still in the band (and the album was almost recorded with him under the name Dear Misery), but I feel as though ex- This Runs Through vocalist Spencer Chamberlain served these songs better. I have watched this video of Dallas Taylor performing an early version of “Reinventing Your Exit” many, many times, and while it’s impossible to deny his talent and charisma as a frontman, it’s also impossible to deny that Chamberlain’s more evenly-toned, somewhat untrained, and expressive screams were better-suited to this more emotive and melodic material than Taylor’s more traditional and metallic roar. Underoath was no longer a metal-leaning hardcore band that flirted with melody– they were now a more even-keeled post-hardcore outfit that used melodies to drive their songs rather than enhance them, and only occasionally delved back into the full-throated terror of their earlier work. Chamberlain’s vocals are closer to the emotional intensity of The Used’s Bert McCracken than anything like the death metal-indebted Taylor (you’d never hear Taylor’s voice break into an obvious whine like Chamberlain’s does less than a minute into opener “Young and Aspiring”), and ultimately, I think these songs are better for his involvement.

Despite including some of the aesthetics of the smudgy, art-damaged breed of contemporary post-hardcore peers such as Glassjaw or the Blood Brothers, ultimately Underoath’s sound on They’re Only Chasing Safety is much more focused on creating driving, catchy rock songs with screaming than it was in exploding the boundaries of what heavy music could be. It’s better for this, too– anthems like “Reinventing Your Exit” and “A Boy Brushed Red Living In Black & White” are so much better as straightforward, well-constructed rock songs than they would have been as the more experimental or fragmented songs the band wrote for The Changing of Times. Accordingly, the production on They’re Only Chasing Safety is by far the best of the band’s career so far, crisp and clean. It’s odd that the production here is leaps and bounds better than their previous three records, because all four of Underoath’s albums to this point were produced by the same person– James Paul Wisner. Whatever class he took before recording Safety, it must have been a good one, because this album also boasts an absolutely glistening drum sound, one which captures the subtle nuances of Gillespie’s playing far better than the production on previous albums, which almost forced him to play heavier than the material required.

That’s not to say this album is completely absent of heavy moments, as the breakdown in “Boy Brushed Red” so succinctly proves. Indeed, I think Chamberlain’s screams here, anguished and bleeding with the desperation of someone with something to prove, provide a lot of the songs with more weight than they would have otherwise had. This is compounded by the fact that Gillespie’s cleans, previously only deployed in the most necessary and urgent of moments, are now almost as ubiquitous as the screams. As I noted before, his vocals somewhat the echo the whiny, heady range of Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba, but Gillespie is a bit more staid and practiced (given that he had the chore of drumming and singing simultaneously). Still, the Gillespie/Chamberlain dynamic is an immediate and affecting one, and songs like “The Impact of Reason” and “Reinventing Your Exit” rest entirely on their interplay. Interestingly, in stark contrast to the formulaic “screamed verse/clean chorus” structure that many mainstream metalcore/post-hardcore bands would soon employ, Underoath weren’t afraid to mix both vocal approaches throughout the song, and also weren’t afraid to delve into expressive and intriguing bridges– a sort of Taking Back Sunday by way of Refused approach, if you will.

The guitar work on They’re Only Chasing Safety has fully forgone any sort of riffy onslaught in favor of guiding the songs with sonic textures, as illustrated on experimental asides like the instrumental interlude “The Blue Note,” and the keyboard accents have finally been completely integrated into the songs themselves, as the intro to “It’s Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door” exemplifies. I’d also like to point out that They’re Only Chasing Safety is the first Underoath album that uses the bass to its fullest potential, as Brandell brandishes his instrument with more melody and confidence than the expressive-yet-rudimentary root notes displayed on prior releases.

“It’s Dangerous Business” also features perhaps the musical high-water mark of the album, the choir-esque “drowning in my sleep” bridge boiling over with emotion so much so that when the chorus comes back around, it’s an instantaneous rush. It’s fitting that such a monstrous track is followed by one of the more restless and aggressive cuts from the album, “Down, Set, Go,” which shows that the guitar work is just as capable of being percussive and propulsive as it is capable of flowing beauty. “Down, Set, Go” also breaks down into an acoustic bridge with some twinkly backing guitar that’s somewhat reminiscent of Clarity-era Jimmy Eat World before absolutely exploding with the most damaged and affecting climax on the record.

The back half of They’re Only Chasing Safety is, as a whole, more aggressive than the first half, with “Down, Set, Go” and “I Don’t Feel Very Receptive Today” functioning as a twin set of engines that carry the album’s momentum after the bigger, catchier hits like “A Boy Brushed Red” and “Reinventing Your Exit” had already been stacked on the front of the album. “Receptive” holds one of the record’s best bass performances (as it both bubbles and holds the song together under the shimmery-yet-panicky staccato guitar hits) as well as perhaps Chamberlain’s most pained and angry vocal performance, imbuing the entire song with an undeniable sense of urgency. It’s here that the album proves its heaviness comes from the obvious emotional instability that ties the whole record together, rather than easy instrumental tricks like tremolo riffs or double-bass breakdowns.

Penultimate track “I’m Content with Losing” is one of the weaker songs on the album, a last-ditch attempt to give the listener another frantic anthem like the ones in the first half, rather than continuing the more damaged and aggressive motif that had been defining the previous few songs. Still, the Chamberlain/Gillespie dynamic is at an early peak, and it’s still exhilarating to hear the clean vocals and the screams stacked on top of each other, conveying more emotional complexity than most other “scene” bands at the time were capable of. Plus, the guitar in the bridge is downright Thrice-esque in its ingenuity and catchiness. The song’s climax is still one of the finer moments on the album.

However, if “Losing” was a bit of step down from the previous eight tracks, closer “Some Will Seek Forgiveness, Others Escape” is a borderline misstep. With more openly worshipful lyrics written by Copeland vocalist Aaron Marsh (who also contributes vocals to the track), “Forgiveness” feels a bit mawkish and overbearing in contrast to the more universally appealing lyrics on the rest of the record. Additionally, the electronic and acoustic elements, rather than being tastefully integrated, make up the majority of the song, and it suffers for it, with the inevitable build-up and climax feeling telegraphed rather than earned. “Jesus, I’m ready to come home,” indeed. It’s not a bad song by any means, but I wish that they had chosen to end the album instead with a song like “I’ve Got Ten Friends and a Crowbar That Says You Ain’t Gonna Do Jack,” a five-minute epic that was relegated to a B-side/bonus track status, but justifies its length with an all-time great Gillespie drum performance and top-to-bottom hooks. If it weren’t for this song and Jacob Bannon’s cool-as-fuck cover art, the reissue of They’re Only Chasing Safety wouldn’t have been worth getting, since the other bonus tracks are just demos/instrumentals/early versions of tracks that are better as finished products on the album.

I will say, for as good as They’re Only Chasing Safety is as a whole, and as popular as it was, it’s somewhat of a black sheep in Underoath’s discography. It’s by far the softest and most poppy release, less a fine-tuning of The Changing of Times as much as it is a full step towards the sounds that they were playing with on that record. And, of course, this album would be eclipsed in heaviness by the three monstrous full-lengths that lay ahead. Still, without this album, I doubt that Underoath would have had the confidence to move forward as a unit with Chamberlain, and he is definitely the frontman and lyricist that their music would need as it would become more tortured and cerebral. And while Gillespie’s ineffable vocal hooks would provide the honey to Chamberlain’s vinegar, the tension between their two vocal styles would provide a lot of the sonic complexity on the band’s records to come.

Meanwhile, although The Changing of Times had easily outsold both Act of Depression and Cries of the Past combined, They’re Only Chasing Safety put it to shame with zero effort, immediately selling 100,000 copies and going gold by the end of 2005. It’s no shock that their next record would again outsell their previous records, but its strengths lie in the way that it combines Underoath’s newfound talent at pop songwriting with an altogether heavier and more complex, if not chaotic, approach.

EVERYONE LOOKS SO GOOD FROM HERE

Although there were no major lineup changes between They’re Only Chasing Safety and 2006’s magnum opus Define the Great Line, there were two key factors that had an influence on Underoath’s identity: the addition of lyrics written by Chamberlain, in collaboration with Gillespie, as well as production helmed by Adam D. from Killswitch Engage and popular metalcore producer Matt Goldman.

The production is much more dynamic than any previous Underoath album, balancing the glistening sheen of the clean vocals with the unmistakable grit of Chamberlain’s screams. Accordingly, the music is also much heavier than on the previous album, albeit in a different way than the death- and black-metal-influenced tip of their earliest work. Instead, Define the Great Line feels like Underoath taking pages from the true standard-bearers of progressive heavy music, like mathcore behemoths Botch and Cave-In, post-metal architects Isis, and the aforementioned art-smeared post-hardcore of early Glassjaw. Even with these new, heavier tones, as well as therapeutic, faith-questioning lyrics (“There Could Be Nothing After This”), Underoath never forgets that melody is king, offsetting every skronky riff (the beginning to opener “In Regards to Myself” is particularly gnarly) or throat-shredding scream with vocal hooks that wouldn’t be out of place in a Further Seems Forever song.

That sounds like an insult, or perhaps like Underoath was scared to leave its comfort zone; I promise you that neither is true. Like The Changing of Times, Define the Great Line is another transitional album for Underoath, following the band’s evolution from newfound teen-scene superstars to unendingly creative metalcore artists. If The Changing of Times and They’re Only Chasing Safety were snapshots of the band in various stages of growing pains, Define the Great Line is the very end of that cycle, right before they were about to burst from their cocoon. Underoath was always a hardcore band at heart, no matter how obfuscated it was by black metal on their early work or sing-along choruses on their middle records, but it’s on Define the Great Line that Underoath shows they can be extremely, punishingly heavy, truly innovative, and genuinely, unguardedly emotional just by taking the sonic aspects they’d applied on They’re Only Chasing Safety and cranking them into the red.

While Define the Great Line is definitely my favorite Underoath album, I do feel as though as if I need to acknowledge that the record has definite weaknesses, although none of them are unique to this album within their discography. Like both of its follow-ups, I feel like the songs on Define often suffer from the background effect, where they end up feeling like one long song. Unlike on their later albums, I think that it works to Define‘s favor, making each song on the album feel like part of a greater tapestry. And that’s certainly not to say that the songs on Define don’t have their own individual identities, as anyone who has heard the singularly electrifying “You’re Ever So Inviting” or massive hit “Writing On the Walls” could testify to.

Ultimately, the greatest strength of Define the Great Line is that listenability. Every moment on this record seems scientifically designed to be compelling and affecting. This is also the album where Chamberlain finally comes into his own as a vocalist. Although I personally disagree, he felt that he was doing something of a Dallas Taylor impression on They’re Only Chasing Safety, and regardless of how true that is, Chamberlain definitely puts his own stamp on Define‘s material. Whether it’s his tortured lyrics or his vocals– he can sing cleans just as well as Gillespie now, and his screams have truly evolved into something by turns completely unique, unfailingly passionate, and animalistic in their ferocity.

The band, perhaps because they have finally managed to spend a full album cycle together, have some of the best and most synced-up chemistry I’ve ever heard in a heavy band. The songs sound less like they were written by a band and more like they were composed, although every performance feels so organic that the nuances take me by surprise every time. Whether it’s the rhythm section’s tasteful innovations (the gentle electronic drums all over the album, Gillespie’s career-best performance in “Returning Empty Handed,” the bass’s nimble drive during the foreboding trudge of “Casting Such A Thin Shadow”), the way that the guitars seem to find endless new and creative ways of sculpting propulsive and compelling soundscapes and sonic textures (the staid and reserved interlude “Salmarnir,” the dizzying change-ups throughout “Writing On the Walls,” the devastating climax of monolithic closer “To Whom It May Concern”), or just the way that the entire band is able to make every single moment on this album sound as urgent and necessary and important as the last, I am quite simply impressed every time I listen to Define the Great Line.

If you’re looking for one song from this album to get a sense of what it’s all about, I’d recommend either “Moving for the Sake of Motion,” a fast-paced and white-knuckled hard-hitter that boasts one of the most singular and unique guitar performances on an already singular and unique album for guitar work, or “There Could Be Nothing After This,” which is the pinnacle of the album’s lyrical themes of discontent and grasping for answers either in spirituality or in self. Truly, though, this is one album you’ll want to sit and listen to front-to-back. Songs like “A Moment Suspended In Time” or the heavy-even-by-this-album’s-standards “Everyone Looks So Good from Here” are simultaneously excellent by themselves and impossible to divorce from the rest of the album, in a way that must be heard to be believed. And if nothing else, you need to hear the iconic intro to “Writing On the Walls,” which immediately transports me to a hot and sweaty Warped Tour mosh pit no matter where I am. “Writing On the Walls” is also indicative of the leap that Underoath took from They’re Only Chasing Safety to Define the Great Line— for a song so catchy, it’s notably absent of repetitive refrains or even a recognizable chorus, and it’s also probably the biggest hit of the band’s career. That’s something any band in any genre should be commended for.

So, imagine you’re Underoath, and you’ve reached both the perfection and logical conclusion of the musical path you’ve explored over the course of your career, as well as reached a commercial peak that any band in your genre, let alone an openly Christian band, would kill for. Where do you go from here? Well, if you’re Underoath, you release a live CD/DVD showing you at the peak of your powers as an untouchably tight live band (seriously, the fact that Gillespie can sing and drum as well as he does on Survive, Kaleidoscope boggles my mind), and then double down on your newfound heaviness, releasing what might be your hardest album yet.

BREATHING IN A NEW MENTALITY

This being their third album with a fixed lineup, it’s probably unsurprising to note that musically, 2008’s Lost In the Sound of Separation is by far Underoath’s tightest release (it definitely displays the most consistently impressive drumming of Gillespie’s time in the band). What you might not expect, however, is that rather than continuing to push the outer edges of post-hardcore, as they did on Define the Great Line, Lost In the Sound of Separation sounds like a more polished and accessible update on the metalcore of 10 years prior (Zao’s Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest, Converge’s When Forever Comes Crashing, Vision of Disorder’s Imprint). Indeed, this is the album where Underoath’s riffs finally return, in the form of sludgy and off-kilter ass-beaters. With Adam D. and Matt Goldman returning as producers, the new songs are given the extremely gritty-yet-crisp treatment that they deserved.

Gillespie’s cleans are here, but in much smaller supply (perhaps utilized best on second track “Anyone Can Dig A Hole, But It Takes A Real Man to Call It Home”), and in many ways, it shows that the band could have always been this heavy if they’d wanted to. But man, I’m glad they showed it off for a full album, just this once. Opener “Breathing In A New Mentality,” with Chamberlain’s most-gruesome-yet vocals and disgustingly distorted bass, communicates that this iteration of Underoath is absolutely not to be fucked with. Even on another relatively tame track like “A Fault Line, A Fault of Mine,” which lets Gillespie breathe a bit and includes a gentle, atmospheric bridge section, any moment of respite is only used to contrast with the objectively crushing nature of the rest of the proceedings. Is there still several doses of melody? Sure– doesn’t make it any less heavy.

Songs like “Emergency Broadcast: The End Is Near” truly convince me that this was Underoath’s attempt to remake Until Your Heart Stops. Guitar pyrotechnics aside, the way the song woozily drifts back and forth between a menacing-yet-calm trudge and a barely-reserved military stomp shows that Underoath had been taking notes from mathcore closely. It’s rare that a band of Underoath’s “scene” can stretch a build-up out for as long as they do here, but this song is nearly six minutes long (the longest track on the album) and it keeps teasing pay-offs and pulling back without delivering, successfully keeping the listener on the edge of their seat the entire time. Seriously, count how many times the song’s slow-burn starts over again– it doesn’t really explode until the final minute of the song, at which point it’s become a genuine surprise. Even still, there’s a sense of reserve that is thrown aside with reckless abandon on follow-up “The Only Survivor Was Miraculously Unharmed,” a song that makes me want to wildly crowdkill anyone in my sight. Christian bands aren’t supposed to have lyrics as dour as “The cycle never really ends,” but Underoath never did anything that they were supposed to.

The album continues to deliver on its dark promise with cuts like “We Are the Involuntary” and “The Created Void,” two songs that seem to probe the deepest edges of what both the band’s sound and lyrics are capable of. “Involuntary” in particular features possibly the most desperate performance of Chamberlain’s career, as he screams the album’s title with such conviction that it feels more poetic than it has any right to. Gillespie balances out Chamberlain’s misery with lines like “There’s gotta be something bigger here” and “This can’t be it,” proving that the band’s faith was never a given and has become just as much fodder for their lyrical soul-searches as anything else. For its part, “The Created Void” fosters an atmosphere that’s as optimistic as it is desolate, lines like “I’m suffering right in front of you” and “We are not alone” coexisting in a manner as discomfiting as it is life-affirming. “I say what I don’t mean and mean what I don’t” could easily be just as much of a clever-for-the-sake-of-clever line as a latter-day Pete Wentz toss-off, but here it is, excuse the pun, downright confessional.

Coming off songs as cerebral and self-assured as the last four, “Coming Down Is Calming Down” sounds even more frantic and full of fear than it would by itself. Mining Chamberlain’s previous issues with addiction for lyrical inspiration, “Coming Down” is one of the more truly unhinged songs in Underoath’s catalog, complete with another manic drum performance from Gillespie. “Can someone help me hold on?” is about as naked a plea for religious affirmation as they could muster.

“Coming Down” leads immediately into one of the bigger hits from Separation, “Desperate Times, Desperate Measures.” “Desperate” starts off with one of the noisiest riffs of the band’s career before ascending into a truly anthemic chorus, finding the middle ground between Separation‘s heaviness and the universal appeal of They’re Only Chasing Safety. Rather than careening to a close, the record slows down again for the two final numbers, “Too Bright to See, Too Loud to Hear” and “Desolate Earth: The End Is Here,” both of which balance hope with bleakness in that signature Underoath fashion. “Too Bright” is the album’s sole clean vocal showcase, successfully building up for four minutes to a gospel-inspired, foot-stomping, hand-clapping climax that gives way to a finale that makes Chamberlain’s screams sound even more inhuman than they otherwise would. Meanwhile, “The End Is Here” is a near-instrumental, mildly experimental number that closes the record out on a truly subdued and melancholy note, one which masks the chaos and uncertainty of the rest of the album with a sense of resignation, the furious questioning of self, God, and others replaced with a plaintive plea for someone, anyone to feel what Underoath is feeling.

IN COMPLETION

Weirdly enough, it’s fitting that Gillespie, the band’s sole remaining founding member, had amicably departed the band by the time of their (former) final album. It’s indicative of the cycle that the band started in 1997 and finished in 2013, sixteen years in the making. What was once new becomes old, and with the inclusion of former Norma Jean drummer Daniel Davison– himself extremely talented and fully capable of filling Gillespie’s enormous shoes– not only did Underoath die as a completely different band than the one that first ripped through Act of Depression, it died at what many consider to be the peak of its powers, with the hulking-yet-concise post-metal masterwork that is 2010’s Ø (Disambiguation). Adam D. wasn’t behind the boards for this one, but Goldman knew exactly what kind of crunchy and feedback-drenched sound the band needed, and this record sounds, accordingly, amazing.

Disambiguation is a fucking heavy fusion of electronic elements, ambience, sludge metal riffs, and metalcore attitude. Opener “In Division” tricks you into thinking that this might be a soft affair before smacking you in the mouth with the heaviest riffs that Underoath have concocted thus far in their career. The addition of Davison actually lends a little bit more of a vulnerable and outwardly aggressive hardcore flavor, while the absence of Gillespie’s more pop-punky cleans allow Chamberlain to flex some more muscles in that arena. “In Division”‘s climax actually finds him reaching into spaces that are reminiscent of, say, “Down In A Hole” by Alice In Chains (minus the yarling, of course).

“Catch Myself Catching Myself” allows the bass work to shine strongly on its own, as it completely carries the intro of the song with its distorted stomp. When the guitars finally collide with it, it’s only to show that they’re just as heavy as they were on the last song. Almost every song on Disambiguation starts off heavy and manages to sound even heavier as time goes on, owing to the band’s expert usage of build-ups and bridges. Songs like “Paper Lung” show the band firing on all cylinders, proving that even with Gillespie gone, their songwriting hasn’t suffered. “Paper Lung” is also another neat bass showcase– I’m glad that Brandell is finally getting some of the studio love that he’s always deserved. Plus, Davison absolutely destroys the skins during the discordant climax.

The Alice In Chains influence that popped up on “In Division” wasn’t a one-off; in fact, I’d describe the sound of Disambiguation as somewhere between Alice In Chains and Isis, or maybe even mid-era Converge (coming from me, that’s a pretty damn big compliment). The abridged length of Disambiguation (it’s their shortest record since They’re Only Chasing Safety) also works in its favor, so every song feels like its own mini-epic without overstaying its welcome. “Illuminator” bursts onto the tracklist sounding like a lost Cave-In track before dissolving into one of the more haunting choruses on the album. Chamberlain seems, even more than on past outings, to be plumbing the depths of his psyche for inspiration. Part of the reason that Disambiguation sounds even darker than the fractured and desperate tone that shaped Define the Great Line and Lost In the Sound of Separation is that Gillespie’s brand of guarded optimism is no longer there to offset Chamberlain’s self-eviscerations. As “Illuminator” draws to a close, Chamberlain talks about “preying on the innocent” as Smith and McTague seem to draw close to destroying their own guitars. This album is a harrowing listening experience.

“Driftwood” is harrowing in an entirely different, utilizing electronic drum loops, a dark and visceral bass line, and extremely subdued ambience to create a truly uncomfortable atmosphere before Underoath leans into their more traditionally destructive tendencies with “A Divine Eradication.” Chamberlain’s claim that “I am not what you made me out to be” seems to be a call for anyone who wrote the band off with They’re Only Chasing Safety to give a listen to Disambiguation— with the way it deftly interjects handclaps into a song filled with skronky, speedy guitar runs and the beastly cry of “Where is my fix?”, “Eradication” is sure to take any casual fan aback, and stands tall as one of the highlights of the record.

With “Eradication” serving as the album’s centerpiece, it’s only natural to assume that the back half of Disambiguation might not hold up to the absolutely stacked front half. That fear is quickly laid to rest with the off-kilter, eerie intro to “Who Will Guard the Guardians?”, a song that bemoans “Machines built by machines,” a song that uses a church bell almost ironically in its bridge, a song that asserts that “We are the lost, and we are the abandoned” before it delves into what might be the most Gillespie-esque section on the album. Rather than making one long for the Underoath of old, however, it actually lends the song greater gravitas than it might have otherwise had, especially when it pauses right before its feedback-laden, teeth-grindingly intense climax.

“Reversal” is another interlude, along the lines of “Driftwood,” although it is much more sparse and aggressive. If Gardell’s bass was menacing before, it’s a junkyard dog here, gnashing back and forth atop the messy guitar and Chamberlain’s scarred voice. “Reversal” also stops, for just one moment of calm, before the record plunges us into “Vacant Mouth,” perhaps the best song on the album. The rhythm section is on fire during the intro, but it’s when the song swerves into its main body that it shines, full of off-time holds that recall Deadguy as well as the type of polished singing that bands like Deadguy could have never dreamed of incorporating. “Vacant Mouth”‘s bridge is nothing short of brilliant, a miasma of needle-sharp guitar riffs and sludgy low end that eventually resolves into a clean section that recalls Nine Inch Nails’s more melodic moments, and then returning to the song’s mammoth of a chorus.

“My Deteriorating Incline” is an excellent choice as a penultimate song, seeing as it’s by far the heaviest song on the album; the riff that the song closes out on is nothing short of groovy and gnarly. At 3:33, it’s one of the shortest songs on the album, but it feels like half its length due to its breakneck pace and bottomless energy. The way it ends and abruptly segues into ethereal closer “In Completion” is somewhat jarring on first listen, but then, everything on this album is supposed to feel jarring. “In Completion” is a fittingly desolate way to finish out the album, and the end of this incarnation of Underoath. It accomplishes the opposite of their older material– where Dallas Taylor screamed, heart on sleeve, over euphoric and melodic guitar work, Chamberlain sings mournfully over one of the heaviest riffs the band ever wrote, before leading into a monstrous screaming section that slowly turns into a long, painful outro. It’s as good a way as any to put a cap on Disambiguation and Underoath as a whole.

Underoath released a best-of compilation in 2012, with two pretty damn good new songs (“Sunburnt” and “Unsound”) that function as a coda to their career. Then they broke up.

WAKE ME

I’m actually not sure just how authentic Underoath’s break-up was, given that they got back together only two years later. It almost seemed as if it was done specifically to fulfill a contract, or something. Nonetheless, in 2016, Underoath played their first reunion show at A Day to Remember’s Self Help Fest, with the momentous return of Gillespie as drummer and vocalist. However, the new iteration of Underoath that released Erase Me in 2018 (on Fearless Records, a notable detour from their usual home on Solid State), was markedly different in that it was a four-piece. They’d retained Dudley as keyboardist, but now McTague was taking up the mantle of bassist and pulling double-duty on guitars (with the help of Chamberlain). Additionally, Chamberlain had come out as an ex-Christian in the interim, and his grappling with that loss of faith informs much of the lyrical content on Erase Me.

This might come as a surprise, given how long-winded I’ve been on Underoath up to this point, but I don’t actually have much of an opinion on Erase Me. Do I like it? Of course I do– I was very scared to listen to it, given that I was led to believe it was an unsalvageable garbage fire, but I ended up pretty pleased with the catchy flavor of songs like opener “It Has to Start Somewhere” and the Linkin Park-tinged anthem “On My Teeth” (which features a standout drum performance from Gillespie). However, I can’t help but feel as if the album was released in order to capitalize on the industrial/hard rock direction that their peers in bands like Bring Me the Horizon had experienced a huge degree of success with. Accordingly, I feel like Erase Me is an album I don’t need to sit with. It’s made to be easily digestible, and while that’s not a bad thing, it’s not quite what I look for when I come to Underoath– I want that interplay of accessible and challenging, and I think in 2018, the musical atmosphere was one that would have welcomed another album like their past three. So, I’m sorry, but there’s not much for me to say on it.

So, twenty-two years and 9,000 words later, am I embarrassed to be a fan of Underoath? If they continue to make albums like Erase Me, maybe, but as it stands, they have at least six albums that are better than they have any right to be, and you have to thank God for that.

NEXT WEEK: I’m taking the week off. I can’t just keep inundating myself with one band over and over, and I need to hit a reset button. Plus, I’m tentatively working on some stuff for the Hard Times, and I need to free up some time for that. I’ll be back October 7th with an article on Bring Me the Horizon.