Underoath ‘The Place After This One’
The Place After This One, the tenth album from Floridians Underoath, sees the band bring all their greatness into one epic, barbaric album. The dynamics, the contradicting styles, the guttural vocals and epic choruses that will ignite crowds.
It’s a bit of a ‘go-round-to-the-start’ for the band in how the creation of the album came about, stripping back all the layers and rebuilding, embracing each band members ability and getting creative.
As for the music, it comes in hard and barely lets go. Opener Generation No Surrender jagged blade approach serves it well with a chanting chorus and breakdown that roars ‘watch it all burn’ from Spencer Chamberlain and while the Devil is doused in pop melodies, the content is still very much the same, the refrain of ‘there’s a devil on my back’ throughout.
Loss is energy drink loaded and has arena size vocals and riffs to match. Survivor’s Guilt meanwhile changes up again with the sound of madness, the song flipping between styles yet not settling on one before a magical finale of ‘guilt, guilt, tied around your neck, was it all just for nothing?’ Who hasn’t felt that at one time?
That is the beauty of Underoath. Four songs in, all sound like Underoath yet all sound very different. All have a hook that you’ll either sing or swing too.
Talking of swinging to, And Then There Was Nothing has epic blast beats from drummer Aaron Gillespie and you can already see the chaos when ‘Fuck you I’m enough’ is screamed live.
Troy Sanders of Mastodon makes an appearance on Vultures and despite being less than three minutes long, it will be the best three minutes of your life this year while Cannibal lands like slab of concrete has hit the ground and keeps smashing.
As Outsider, an ambient melancholy number, finishes the album, you’re left with the dual vocal sound of Chamberlain and Gillespie having blown your ears apart, driven by music that is impossible to pin down into one size and twelve tracks that dares you to get on the ghost ride. It may have taken to album number ten, however Underoath have truly made a 10/10 album.
Album Review By Iain McCallum
