Perhaps you’ve already dismissed Underoath because they’re Christian
metalcore. You don’t care for the sweet-and-sour vocals or the raging,
unrepentant righteousness. You may have underestimated them because the
Tampa sextet defies attempts to pin them to a board in a musical
taxonomy. Whatever you might think, it’s worth witnessing them for
yourself, because their explosive stage show will reshape your opinion.
The players writhe and shudder like a cadre of epileptics enduring
seizures while attempting to destroy their instruments. Keyboardist
Chris Dudley bangs his head so violently, you fear it will fly off his
neck and into the front row.
“If I’m going to be onstage playing songs, I’m going to have as much
fun as possible,” says Dudley. “I’m of the mindset that if I’m not
coming offstage completely demolished, I don’t feel like I did my
job.”
Underoath clearly hail from the metalcore school: screeching vocals
paired with melodic singing beneath a throbbing edifice of crashing
guitars and dramatic loud/soft dynamics. But their music has evolved
over the years. Early albums had more of a European black-metal sound
that changed with the band’s membership.
Formed in 1997 while the members were still in high school,
Underoath’s lineup remained in flux for the first three albums, with
only drummer/vocalist Aaron Gillespie remaining from the founding
group. Dudley joined prior to their second album, 2000’s Cries of
the Past, and guitarist Timothy McTague signed on for 2002’s The
Changing of Times, helping to herald a new direction. McTague
transformed the band’s stage energy, and the music began to change as
well.
But the biggest change was the departure of singer Dallas Taylor,
who was replaced with Spencer Chamberlain prior to the recording of
their breakthrough fourth album, 2004’s They’re Only Chasing
Safety. More polished and much poppier than their prior releases,
with far more singing, Chasing Safety would go gold within a
year, bolstered by Warped Tour appearances.
“That’s the first record Spencer was on, so from an outsider’s
perspective it looks like [the band] dropped the old singer, and [the
new singer] wanted it to not be as heavy, when in fact, it’s complete
the opposite,” says Dudley. “Dallas wanted it to be super poppy, really
just rock music. When I showed Spencer the Underoath demos we did with
Dallas, he didn’t like it at all. His favorite bands are Botch and
Dillinger Escape Plan, so when he came into the mix, he actually kind
of turned the wheel hard left, and was like, ‘Look, I’m not going to be
happy playing poppy rock music.'”
It took until 2006’s Define the Great Line for this new
vision to take force, as Chamberlain began to feel more comfortable in
the band and returned to the harder singing style he’d had before
joining Underoath. It dovetailed with a heavier, more cinematic sound.
“By the time we got around to writing the next record, we hated
They’re Only Chasing Safety,” he says. “With Define the Great
Line, we started to see where we wanted to go.”
With their first release with the same lineup as a previous album
and their sound solidifying, Underoath followed Define with last
year’s Lost in the Sound of Separation, which is more a
refinement than a departure.
“We’re always going to be trying to do better and bigger things,”
says Dudley. “But I think that we’re done with having completely
different records from record to record.”
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2009.