Underoath - Interview - 2009

Access All Areas

Around a formica-topped table sit various members of Thursday, Underoath and Taking Back Sunday. We’re backstage at the Austrian leg of the Give It A Name tour and – in between soundchecking - the performers are smoking, drinking, eating, reading, and exchanging war stories.

Thursday’s amiable frontman Geoff Rickley leans in and grins: “Us and the Taking Back Sunday boys have this joke,” he says. “We’re like, ‘Damn, we hate going on before Underoath’ and they’re like, ‘We hate having to follow them!’” he says laughing nervously.

The joke illustrates just how bands feel about having to try and impress – even your own crowd - when sharing a bill with unyielding power of Underoath. Whether you precede or follow this band, you will always come off worse. And it’s no small compliment that the bands come out to watch the band from the wings each night. From the crushing metal to the soaring choruses; the mesmerisingly serene to the eye-poppingly energetic; the all-encompassing sensory bombardment of the Underoath live experience is a spectacle not easily mimicked, bettered or forgotten.

Which is baffling considering its members are six unassuming and polite 20-somethings from Florida.

Despite their limited appearances in Europe, they have nonetheless conveyed this awesome power of their music to a massive – and still growing - fanbase. Hammer travelled with frontman Spencer Chamberlain, singer/drummer Aaron Gillespie, guitarists Timothy McTague and James Smith, bassist Grant Brandell and keyboardist Christopher Dudley from Vienna, Austria to Bologna, Italy to witness the growing fervour first hand.

The Vienna Arena

The Vienna Arena sounds grand, but not only is it smaller than the word arena suggests, it’s not even shaped like an arena. The whole venue is a complex of old converted utility buildings with an outdoor stage, a second room and concreted outdoor area with walls covered in colourful graffiti – it’s like Lord Of The Flies set in 1980s Harlem. The pre-gig hubbub is at fever pitch downstairs in the main 1,000 capacity hall, and upstairs bands try to contain and conserve their adrenalized energy – some better than others.

Taking Back Sunday’s louche frontman, Adam Lazarro exchanges tour stories with Underoath’s usually quiet and withdrawn frontman, Spencer Chamberlain. Upstairs an angry mob is watching BrokeNCYDE’s Get Crunk video. The band are like an emo car-crash playing b-rate boy-band bullshit with some metalcore yelps and screams in the background. Not only is everyone incensed at the shameless raping of hardcore fashion and music, but the band have apparently been booked to play Warped Tour along with some of the bands here.

They vow to boycott the band or simply strike in protest.

The almost childlike excitement dies down, and the real preparation – and possibly nerves – kick in: people do vocal warm ups, tap drumsticks on sofas and hunt down spare plectrums.

Underoath hitting the stage is the punch-line to Geoff’s joke. Thursday were deservedly well-received, but the response from the reserved Austrians is unhinged by comparison. In only ten songs, the band still manages to fire all the big guns in their arsenal: from the screamed and growled vocal catharsis and thundering heaviness, to the soaring clean choruses and into eerie electronic soundscapes. From the uplifting to the angry, from the delicate to the devastating, the band take every member of the crowd through a physical and mental workout.

Afterwards, the introverted frontman opens up like a blossoming flower. The balance of post-performance high to red wine high we will never know. Spencer’s is the only marked behavioural change: Tim and Chris are as bouncy and upbeat as ever, Aaron and Grant hang out as usual and James remains as silent as ever (in fact we observe someone trying to engage with James and making little headway). Let’s have a crack…

The Music

Too many magazines research what the most newsworthy/shocking thing is about a band before they interview them, and then go ask them about it. Often, because it is most shocking thing, writers and gossips from on and offline, will have milked the story cow to only sultana of interest. Underoath are endlessly quizzed about singer Spencer Chamberlain’s drug addiction, and if not that, the whole ‘Christian metal’ thing. Both of which hold little new info or interest to fans.

But ask the band about music, and you really start get a picture of where the band are from, who they are, what they’re doing and why.

“Each song goes through six individual filters,” says James after a long pause, as he and Aaron explain how all of the band write the music. This is one of about three things James says during our 40 minute interview as the bus drives from Vienna to Bologna. As Aaron admits, when James talks it’s a treat. Not just because he rarely does, but because when he does, it’s considered, concise and right on the money.

“I think a big part of why we sound like we do is that musically we don’t all agree on any one thing at all,” says the red-haired drummer, elaborating. “That’s why it takes us two years to make an Underoath record. From the writing to the mastered record, it takes two years of us arguing, disagreeing and being annoyed at each other. It’s a very communal process.

“We fight it out. This part James is in love with, this part Tim’s in love with, this part I’m in love with and you get this big mess. And I think Underoath is a mess.”

This may not sound that revolutionary: a band all writing the music. But if you look at the inlay sleeves of your favourite albums, you may be surprised to learn who actually writes the music. Steve Harris writes most of the music for Iron Maiden, Ville Valo writes the music for HIM and Devon Townsend writes Strapping Young Lad, so it’s interesting to know that each Underoath album really is the result of six musicians all fighting their corner for their ideas of what should and shouldn’t be on the record. But Aaron doesn’t want to go into too much detail..

“The writing process is very private to me. I don’t think people will ever see inside it… or that I even want people to see it.”

And actually it is almost impossible. Like trying to capture the scale and awe of Monument Valley or The Grand Canyon, you just can’t translate the humanity of the song-writing process into words. You just do it.

Surrounding the serenity of our interview, the post-gig revelry continues. Partying Underoath-style is a world away from the desperate and predictable vice of many a band at this age and stage; but the volume is no quieter and the activity no less boisterous for the relative sobriety. The guys and their crew howl with laughter and crash about the bus and we thunder towards the Italian border at the mercy of our foul-mouthed German bus-driver as he handles the massive steering wheel as if man-handling an oil drum out of a sandpit.

If you need to have make-up and crappy names like Synyster Gates to sell records, then you shouldn’t be here.

Then Tim says: “People might associate us with Avenged Sevenfold because they’re pissed republicans and ‘so metal’, but they’re a gimmick, they’re a circus. They can’t play and they can’t write a song. What’s worse is the way they look. If you need to have make-up and crappy names like Synyster Gates to sell records, then you shouldn’t be here. That’s not rock’n’roll to me. Arena rock maybe, but not real rock’n’roll. If you’re basing yourself on how cool you are or how many girls you can trick into thinking your band is cool you can just… take that home. I’m not saying that’s what Avenged Sevenfold do, but they do a lot of crap that makes me think, ‘that’s why you and us will never be the same’. At the same time, we don’t write a really heavy record ‘just to show all those Avenged Sevenfold fans what real metal is like’.

Back stories

Morning breaks like an anvil falling onto a glass grand piano. The band – used to the late daily cycle – are still asleep as the driver repeatedly yells ‘Schiesse’ through his cigarette at a car blocking the carpark to the Italian venue. Anyway, the band deserve a rest. They’ve been busy. 

Most of the band are only in their mid-twenties (some even married) and they have already released an impressive six studio albums: from their 1999 debut, Act of Depression, to last year’s truly breathtaking Lost in the Sound of Separation. The albums themselves as well as Spence’s aforementioned substance abuse, the ‘christian thing’ and former frontman Dallas Taylor’s departure have all been well documented. But what of beginning of the beginning? What existed before the Big Bang? Why did the Big Bang even happen?

“My earliest memory of me playing drums… hard, was in the church right next to my parents house,” explains Aaron, the first to rise, as usual. “I remember seeing the guy from Spunge hit two cymbals at the same time so I wanted to try it out. He had long hair and be all sweaty and the sweat would splash off the kit as he did all these snare fills. It just looked so cool.”

Like many musicians, Aaron’s musical interest was broad, and he spent time getting into (and sometimes out of) gospel, rock’n’roll, country music, heavy Christian metal like Living Sacrifice, old school hardcore like Shutdown and Chrome Dome and finally the likes of Jimmy Eat World and Glassjaw – adding, “I also like stuff like Oasis and Blur”. It’s easy to see how the combination of metal, hardcore, faith music and songwriters are the building blocks of Underoath’s sound.

Tim’s upbringing was a little more restrictive, musically speaking:

“I grew up in a really Christian home and my parents played a lot of Christian music, which I didn’t like. A lot of musicians grow up with cool back stories of ‘being raised on the Beatles’ – I never had that. 

Tim’s journey started as his teens began, getting into The Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins.  

“I used to skate a lot and all the skate videos had hiphop stuff in: Tribe Called Quest, Mobb Deep and old Wu Tang Clan. I would stay up when my parents had gone to bed and watch MTV because I wasn’t allowed to.

“A friend in middle school played me Piebald and The Get Up Kids’ Four Minute Mile album; after that At The Drive in turned up on Grand Royale [The Beastie Boys‘ label]. I also got into Refused and heavy Christian stuff like Sao and Embodyment. Then in 1999 I got Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity which remains one of the most influential bands on me to this day.”

The seed was clearly sewn, but only when he had joined Underoath and starting touring when he was 17 was he exposed to a wider world of bands: “It was a culture shock. I didn’t necessarily like many of them, but it was cool to see what was going on. There were no cultural limitations on me any more.”

So add to Aaron’s already broad influences, post-hardcore, cerebral hardcore punk, hiphop and indie rock and you can see from where Underoath get the infectiously appealing breadth and depth of their sound.

Chemistry

Outside, the scorching Italian sun cooks the tarmac of the empty venue car park. Someone calls out, ‘kick-ball! Kick-ball out in the parking lot, now!’. The game is basically like rounders only you kick a football, and Taking Back Sunday’s guitarist Eddie Reyes is collecting ‘volunteers’. 20 minutes later 30 or so members of Underoath, Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, Emery and Innerpartysystem are outside kicking, throwing, yelling and exchanging jocular put-downs. We wonder if Eddie sees the irony in his calling Tim a ‘little troll’.

Even Hammer snapper, Naki, gets involved (because no one knows his name he is labelled ‘mega-pixel’. It sticks).

As we watch members of Escape The Fate, Emery and the other bands on get their kicks, it’s interesting to see that while the cohesion of the band onstage have an almost fraternal symbiosis, a telepathic synergy, offstage they feel more like independent individuals rather one inter-dependent parts of a single unit. While you may wonder whether the guys actually like each other or get on at all, you realise that it is the fraternal ease that means they need no pretence of unity. Each does their own thing for the majority of the day, with occasional overlaps like eating pizza or sharing a drink after the show. It’s the more brief overlaps where their relationship becomes transparent: the one word sentence, the tap on the back, the smile, the eye contact that explains a volume. It’s interesting to observe as the guys seem oblivious to how their instincts can read each other at a glance. It starts to make sense how this band have managed to convey a sense of unity above the music alone.

Tim holds court on the court as various people run in various direction to/away from a ‘soccer’ ball. Aaron darts around with intent: like a squirrel collecting nuts. Barrel-chested keyboardist Chris is invariably locked in jocular and upbeat conversation with someone or other. Spencer moons and drifts as if Neil from The Young Ones had joined a band. After punting balls over the car park boundary, James sits in the sun and stars into space – alone with his thoughts.

And as most do in the pre-prep gig mill-pool backstage Grant buffets about like a boat loose of its mooring. 

But back from the innocent play of kick-ball, back the reality of the music business: the stage, the fans, the merch, the autographs, the live show. This is serious business, the business of fun. Serious music played for the enjoyment of thousands of Italians in an old aircraft hangar. And while the Bolognese (the people not the sauce) may not understand every word, the honesty, intent and integrity is crystal clear.