In an interview with Alternative Press in 2016 Spencer Chamberlain and Aaron Gillespie both agreed that Lost In The Separation is the Underoath record they are most proud of, adding that it is the one album that Underoath fully realised what it was that they wanted to be. It is Underoath in their truest and purest form, and is a nuanced, writhing, furious beast of an album. Given the context of Aaron leaving the band midway through the touring cycle for this album under somewhat bitter terms, there is a darkness and uncertainty about Lost In The Sound that is reflective of where they were at as people at the time, and this is something that a lot of people, including me, gravitated towards.
Define The Great Line before it was a huge leap forwards in every facet for Underoath; it is far superior musically and sonically to They're Only Chasing Safety, shows startling maturity for a band still relatively young at the time, and was epic in ways they had barely hinted at before then. Lost In The Sound Of Separation is Underoath taking that new direction and fully owning it, showing fury and introspection in equal parts, and going head-on into what they laid the groundwork for on Define The Great Line. It opens with two full-throttle pieces of screamo aggression that ebb and flow surprisingly fluidly despite the startling forward motion. Little touches of synth here and there give extra body to the overall sound, and add to an incredible production job by Matt Goldman and Adam Dutkiewicz. The process for the production of this albums has audible traces if you know what to be listening for; they attempted to record something without any studio "tricks", that is, no double or triple tracked vocals, no fixed performances, what you hear is what you'd get at a live show. Group vocals like that heard on "Too Bright To See, Too Loud To Hear" were recorded with a single microphone, everyone standing around in a circle, achieving an atmosphere and eeriness you wouldn't get with a bunch of multi tracked vocal stems (Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon was a constant reference point throughout the recording process). From here the album plays a lot like a movie that keeps getting better and better, until you want to go back and watch it again with the knowledge of how it ends to fully appreciate all of it. Slightly experimental epics "A Fault Line, A Fault Of Mine", "Emergency Broadcast: The End Is Near" and "The Created Void" let you in on a facet of Underoath's sound that was hinted at on Define The Great Line, while "The Only Survivor Was Miraculously Unharmed" is one of the heaviest songs Underoath have released in the Spencer era.
The album builds into a crescendo towards the last few tracks, before suddenly throwing a left hook with "Too Bright To See, Too Loud To Hear", one of the more accessible Underoath tracks. This is the track that defines what Lost In The Sound Of Separation is all about, in my opinion. There has always been a darker tone to a lot of Underoath's music, but here is where it is present in the full. This is what I meant about the context of the band having an influence on the sound of the record; after growing up on the road together they were beginning to spread apart and turn into men, and realise that they weren't all exactly the same. The things they believed, the ways they acted, the people they were; they were all beginning to part ways as you do when you mature and age (this is all in a great interview you can see here). As a result there is a pit in the stomach feeling that manifests in this penultimate track and seeps across the rest of the album. The final line "we're forgetting our forgiveness" lingers for a while as the song leaves in the same way it entered; timidly, head down and through the back door.
The final track "Desolate Earth: The End Is Here" adds further to what "Too Bright..." creates by offering a small glimpse of hope. Some might say that it has receded beyond reach, but the fact that they end the record on this not and not "Too Bright..." says something profound. "You said there was nothing left down here. Well, I roamed around the wasteland and I swear I found something; I found hope, I found God, I found the dreams of the believers. Oh God save us all." It is this glimmer amongst the filth and sludge of life that define Underoath as a band, and this difficult album in particular. It is far from the self-proclaimed ability to change oneself that is preached across a lot of "popular" heavy music, but something that comes with accepting one's failures and one's fate to continue to do the same with everyone else around them. It's an acceptance of grace that is far more profound and challenging than anything that can come from within, and something I find incredibly moving about the final moments of introspection on this album. Depending on your beliefs, this can have varying implications, but for me it is continually a point of reference in a world that I see as increasingly going to shit.
Underoath tapped something incredibly personal yet universal with Lost In The Sound Of Separation, and it's an album that has become something really special for me over time. It's eerie and atmospheric, but very headbangable at the same time. There is so much to grasp musically and lyrically all the way through that I still come back and am challenged every time; in this sense I really believe that it transcends whatever unnecessary genre tag you want to slap on it and is one of the most important underground albums of the 2000s you've never heard.
Comments
Post a Comment