Review Summary: Underoath playing blackened metalcore. No, I didn't think it was possible either.
Underoath, along with many other bands in the genre known as metalcore, polarize popular opinion. Some people absolutely love this band and would like to do dirty things to its members' members. Others would like nothing more than for bands like this to drop off the face of the universe. I will readily admit to not being the biggest fan of the more post-hardcore bands in metalcore, as well as the post-hardcore genre in general; I've always been more keen to listen to normal hardcore punk bands. So when I heard that Underoath, the poster child for Warped Tour attending scenesters aplenty, made two legitimate metal albums in their early days, I was reluctant to believe so. Their first album, Act of Depression, is a sloppy, overly preachy mess of an album. Their second album however, Cries of the Past, is one of the best -core albums I've ever heard.
When the first song "The Last" came through the speakers, I was astounded to hear something I thought was foreign to the members of Underoath: actual guitar riffs. Lots and lots of heavy, thrashy, black and death metal based guitar riffs. The keyboards used in this song, as well as the rest of the album, draw heavy traces from melodic black metal, with parts on "The Last" reminding me of the keyboard parts on Satyricon's first album "Dark Medieval Times". There is A LOT of tremolo picking on this album, once again drawing influence from black metal. There's also some slightly experimental aspects to this album; a few of songs feature acoustic guitar sections. The songs are very long, with the shortest one being 7:36 and the longest one being 11:24. Because of this, there's only five songs on the entire album, but the album's running time as a whole comes up to 42:08, much shorter than Act of Depression but much longer than some of their later material such as The Changing of Times.
The band itself has a much different lineup than they do now. Aaron Gillespie and Christopher Dudley are there on drums and keyboards, but the guitars are played by Corey Steger (who left after this album, no doubt contributing to the style change on The Changing of Times) and Octavio Fernandez. Both make wonderful use of the aforementioned riffs and tremolo picking, considering the two of them are obviously much more influenced by extreme metal than the band's later guitarists. Bass is handled by Matt Clark, who, in general heavy metal fashion, is turned down so far he's inaudible in the mix. Dallas Taylor, current vocalist for Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, delivers an amazing vocal performance, with about 99% of the album being done in black metal screams or death metal growls (give or take a few spoken word sections as well as very intermittent clean vocals). Gillespie dishes out a wonderful drum performance, making good use of extreme metal standards like skank beats, double bass, and blast beats (yes, blast beating in an Underoath record). The instrumentation, while nowhere near as sloppy as Act of Depression, is still sloppy at times. This mainly occurs when Gillespie does a long, Dave Lombardo-esq double bass line; it sounds like every second hit isn't as strong as every first hit.
The lyrics are also MUCH less preachy than the lyrics on Act of Depression. This is probably the best improvement the band made between the two albums other than the songwriting. The lyrics on Act of Depression were just a bunch of teenagers whining into a microphone about how abortion is evil and God is great and all that *** (considering my stance against religion, overly preachy religious lyrics REALLY get annoying to me). Cries of the Past, however, takes the preachiness level down about 5 knots, making the overt references to Jesus very minimal and other references to Christianity much more subtle. Compare these two sets of lyrics from the two albums. Firstly, from Burden In Your Hand on Act of Depression:
You should of thought about the baby before you had sex, because you have destroyed a gift from God
You kill, you destroyed
Never will this baby be able to grow up or show it's love
You'll never hear it say I love you, I love you
God does not give you the privilege to carry a child for nothing
When you kill, you destroy that child's dreams and hopes
How innocent a baby is... how can you put it to death?
What if you were aborted... you could of never had life
And now you make a choice to take this child's life because it is a burden in you hands
Really overly preachy and absolutely no subtlety. Now, from And I Dreamt of You on Cries of The Past:
Words are pointless, for this love is speechless [x2]
Preparing for the curtain's closure
Laying there, clutching hands so tight; I can feel your heart
Telling me it will be alright
Ascension to heaven where this love can not only walk,
But it runs through the endless fields of joy,
Where love neither ends nor begins but flows everlasting
This was thy dream this daybreak and will by thy prayer
That T will rest sleepless 'til the sun rises on that day
And butterflies sing with us, as we write love symphonies
The pages of life fill the story of our love in a time long ago
Where fairy tales come true
And you and I, my love, will live happily ever after. [x3]
I love you
Way more subtle and almost no overt references to Christianity.
All in all, Cries of the Past is the best album Underoath has ever made. It's a damn shame that they changed their style on The Changing of Times, because what they created on this album is among the best music ever put out by a metalcore band. I recommend this album to anyone looking for good metalcore music. Certainly knocks the piss out of They're Only Chasing Safety.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Subrick
