UnderØath has always been one of my favorite bands.
I know they broke up and now I guess they are back together. And while I think I have moved on from the phase in life where all I listened to was metal music --
When I was 14, I used to have a binary test for whether or not a metal band was good. It was:
Is the band UnderØath? Yes=1 No=0. I didn't make a lot of friends for a while.
-- I can always find myself crawling back to the accessibility in Florida-native UØ's brand of distortion.
--
I discovered UnderØath when I got a Tooth and Nail sampler of 96kbps tracks from their up-and-comer's. It was probably "It's Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door". I could never remember the whole track name. All I remembered was SCREAMING. And SINGING. And SCREAMING. And SCREAMING. It was SCREAMO
Then I borrowed They're Only Chasing Safety from Justin who was in the 10th grade, and listened to it on my Phillip's portable CD player with my Panasonic clip-on earphones, for probably three hours straight on a field-trip to the Phoenix Art Museum (or something like that). I was enamored with the noise. But I was mostly enamored with "I'm Content With Losing". I couldn't get over it. It was SCREAMO
Well, I had to give the CD back, but then I got it again and ripped it to my PC and it was bomb's away. Over a period of a couple months, it was all I could listen to.
Well, over the summer between 9th and 10th grade, I managed to borrow a copy of Define The Great Line from Thomas who was in the same grade I was. Over a period of a couple years, it was all I could listen to.
Well, over the summer between 11th and 12th grade, I managed to buy a copy of Lost In The Sound Of Separation with my own money. Over a period of a couple years, it was all I---
My dang brother managed to find the .mp3 files I made of that album and proceeded to over-play "Too Bright to See, Too Loud to Hear" (literally for hours, same song, repeat, for like a year). Well, Josh and I both had an appreciation for the juxtaposition of Aaron Gillespie's clean vocals against the heavy-shred bleeding esophagus of Spencer Chamberlain. I still really enjoy the album but it took a few years of maturity to get over the sibling-jealousy I had for My Favorite Band. I started listening to UnderOath because nobody else in my family wanted to listen to it and he had to go and "ruin" it by enjoying it like I enjoy it.
But I'm more hardcore, see? I actually think it is UnderOath's Ø (Disambiguation) that stands on the pedestal of Magnum Opus. I think it is the best album they ever created.
And innumerably I've been told I was wrong. Nobody likes it. Well, some people like it. But seriously, nobody likes it.
Why? Because UØ always ran on the fuel mixture, a stoichiometric concoction of SCREAM/CLEAN DISTORTION/EXPERIMENTAL LYRIC/INSTRUMENTAL HAPPY/ANGRY UPLIFTING/DEPRESSING music that got them the label deal, that got them millions of albums sold, that got them on the fathers of crossover music list. They were giving into that patriarchy, the one that said "you'll only sell music if Adam D likes it".
Subsequently, bands like Killswitch Engage, As I Lay Dying, and HASTE THE DAY were winning the battle at the release of 2010's gooder metal album. I don't really like to talk about it.
No, Disambiguation was the kind of album that makes a person think twice about its merits. It isn't an instantaneous joy-ride. It's thoughtful, and deep, and tragic like the last famous battles of warriors long past dead. It's the kind of progressive that makes you uncomfortable because you didn't think music made you feel like this.
I'm convinced that it is the best metal album to ever come out of a Solid State band (with the exceptions of maybe The Chariot's The Fiance and The Chariot's Wars And Rumors Of Wars), sheerly due to the creative force that was unleashed by the depature of last remaining original member Aaron Gillespie from the band. (I love The Almost, and I think that Aaron is a very good musician, so this isn't so much an insult as pure observation and conjecture).
It really takes some listening with Ø (Disambiguation). It's an acquired taste. It's not easy like the previous stuff. You aren't given the respite of soft vocals with emotive lyrics. You're stuck listening to the whole thing;
like you're standing in the Tower of Terror line,
waiting to get to the place where you sit,
where they take up you up,
where they send you up and down,
and the whole thing is uncomfortable.
You have to let it grow on you. And then you reap the rewards of your patient ears, the feeling of microgravity for that split second where if you dropped your phone, it would float there with you all the way down.
And then the drop stops.
And shoots you up.
And then drops you again.
And then you're released back to the wild wondering what happened to your ears and why the breath in your lungs is aching for community.
That's Ø (Disambiguation) in a nutshell. I can only explain it by metaphor because there is no simile to suit it. It's incomparable. It's deep. But not deep in the bungie-jumping way. Deep in the "leagues under the ocean" fashion.
It isn't fashionable. And that's why it suits my fancy.
Recommended listens:
In Division
Paper Lung
Who Will Guard The Guardians
Vacant Mouth
