UnderOath

In today's world of music a lot of bands seem to be exploding into the scene and becoming huge almost instantly. A lot of these bands have almost no talent and have not even come close to earning their success *cough fall out boy cough* but one band out there today totally goes against this new stereo type.

Yes, UnderOath has recently become one of the most popular bands in their genre of music in the past year and yes, their new music hides a lot of their musical talent. But what makes these guys different is the fact that they didn't come out of nowhere and they have rightfully earned all the attention that they are now receiving.

UnderOath quietly came onto the scene all the way back in 1998 in their home state of florida. They had a sound heavily influenced by straight up black metal and a lot of grindesqe type parts along with an extremely faulty line-up. In fact, the only original member in the band today is their drummer Aaron Gillespie. They played many local shows and gained a very good but small fan base in the area. One show actually landed them a deal with solid state/tooth and nail records which is the label that they are still on today.

After putting out two eps and having a lot of line-up changes, they put out The Changing of the Times. This is actually a very solid cd compared to what was produced in their eps. The cd shows a lot more growth in their music and the pretty big transition that took place between the eps and their newest cd. It still had a lot of pretty metal parts but they were now mixed in with a lot more melodic, open sounding chords and some singing here and there.

After this cd was put out, UnderOath's fan base became that of pretty much every other solid state band, which is not amazing yet still big enough for them to get their name and cd put in popular business chains like best buy. During this time, Underoath also grabbed a spot on warped tour 2003, but while on tour they ran into some troubles with their frontman Dallas Taylor. The band finally decided that they should send Dallas on his way and work on finding a new singer. So while Dallas was out starting his new band, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster (which are worth being checked out www.purevolume.com/mayleneandthesonsofdisaster ) Underoath was busy trying to find their new frontman and fill in a few other gaps that were missing.

In what seemed like no time at all Underoath was back in full force with their new and solid line-up of Spencer Chaimberlain on vocals, Tim McTague (probably the coolest dude ever) on guitar, James Smith also on guitar, Chris Dudley on the keys, Grant Brandell on bass, and last but not least Aaron Gillespie on drums and also some singing. UnderOath was also in the middle of finishing their new cd at the time of making their line-up final. But a lot of the stuff written for this cd was put together by Dallas, and Spencer felt that it would be kind of lame to take all of someone else’s material and run with it. So the band decided to scrap the entire cd and start over from nothing to create something totally new and something that fit this new band better than the same old stuff that they had been doing before.

After some time spent in the studio, out came They're are Only Chasing Safety, and the rest is pretty much history. Some how, and I really have no idea how it happened, Underoath became pretty much explosive over night. Every twelve year old girl obsessed with My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy was now all over Underoath like no ones business. But somehow, at the same time they upheld their true fan base of kids that had known about them for years and still loved them. So now Underoath had found a pretty good medium in their music and they were pretty comfortable in what came to be for them. Their true musical and song writing talent kept them from losing all their true fans, and their good looks keep pulling in the money from all the 12 year old girls who want to go to their shows just so they can try and touch Spencer’s butt.

As I have said before with the other bands I have written about ( and maybe it just runs in the solid state family ) but these guys are like the NICEST dudes ever. Me and my good friend Dan went to go see these guys in boston with fear before and the chariot. So somehow Dan had actually met these guys before and they had actually become good buddies. So good in fact that they would talk to him through myspace and email just to help him out with papers that he was writing for school. But anyway, we got to the show a little late and as we were going through the entrance, there was Chris Dudley who is one of the nicest guys I have ever met. He gave Dan a big hug ( and I mean big, Chris is a massive man ) and they talked for a little bit and then we went inside and enjoyed the show. But after the show was over we ran into the whole band outside the venue and we got to talk with them some more. We all ended up chatting for a good half hour or so and even got invited to go eat some burritos with them, but unfortunately me and dan had to leave to pick someone up at the air port.

So yeah, that’s all I have to say about these guys guys. The only other thing I have is go see these guys live and you wont be disappointed. Just make sure that you see them in a pretty big venue because small stages don’t mix well with a six piece band. Underoath is known for going totally insane on stage and they can’t really do that at all when they have no room to move. Also their new cd is planned to be coming out in only a few months and the songs are supposed to be absolutely brutal. They are going to try and get away from all the pop stuff this time and go with some more insanity, or at least that’s what Tim has been saying.

Next time: THE FALL OF TROY