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Underoath Stews In Smell Of Success
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Published: November 20, 2008
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If cleanliness is next to godliness, Underoath is taking an alternate route.
"We wear the same clothes onstage every night," keyboardist Chris Dudley says. The closest the threads come to the laundry, he says, is getting laid out to dry after the show.
Guitarist Tim McTague doesn't even go that far.
"He just balls his up and sticks them in a plastic bag," bassist Grant Brandell says. "By the end of the tour, the smell is just ..." His voice trails off but the look on his face says it all.
Still, even the smell of McTague's road rags must be comforting to the rest of the band, considering the state it was in two years ago.
The Tampa-based post-hardcore outfit - which also includes singer Spencer Chamberlain, drummer-singer Aaron Gillespie and guitarist James Smith - had just seen its album, "Define the Great Line," enter the Billboard 200 album chart at No. 2. It was playing the main stage on Warped Tour.
The tour reached Vinoy Park in St. Petersburg in late June, a show capped off by Underoath's tumultuous sort-of-homecoming set.
But celebrating was the last thing on the band mates' minds.
Speaking with the Tribune a few weeks before the St. Petersburg show, Chamberlain sounded oddly subdued for someone whose band had just achieved unexpected success.
"I don't know. I don't know what to think. We didn't expect it at all," Chamberlain said of the album's strong chart showing.
Talking about his lyrics, the singer made what became a prescient statement.
"I've been through it all and back," Chamberlain said. "I've lost friends to addictions and other things. My lyrics talk about being lost, not knowing who you are, trying to find yourself and trying to find God; about feeling alone. I saw stuff which I wish no one had to see."
Chamberlain himself was in the grips of cocaine addiction, the band revealed to Alternative Press magazine. His revelation to his band mates set off a chain reaction of intra-band confrontations, revealing conflicts and schisms they had kept hidden until then.
It almost killed the band, but ultimately may have saved it. Communication lines now are more open than ever.
"If we have a problem, we talk to each other now," Dudley says.
Revitalized, the band returned this year with its tightest, hardest-hitting album to date, "Lost in the Sound of Separation."
The band began its touring cycle for the album on this summer's Mayhem festival alongside metal heavyweights such as Slipknot, Disturbed and Mastodon.
The members of Underoath are Christians, but say there isn't a conflict with taking their music before the secular hordes.
It's mostly a non-issue, says Brandall, who sports an elaborate, eye-catching Jonah and the whale tattoo on his right arm.
"If someone asks me about Christianity, I'll talk to them about it," Dudley says.
Dudley may need a Spanish phrase book for those conversations next month. The band gets a short break from touring following Tuesday's show in Tampa, then heads to South America for the first time.
ON TOUR
Underoath
WITH: Saosin, The Devil Wears Prada and The Famine
WHEN: 7 p.m. Tuesday
WHERE: The Ritz, 1503 Seventh Ave., Ybor City; (813) 247-2555
COST: $20 advance, $24 day of show
Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com.
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