Underoath - 'Lost In The Sound Of Separation'

Emo mainstays Underoath boldly thrust the style into a new direction with dramatic flair, flashpoint anxiety and a deeper purpose than their peers.

Underoath has spent a literal career since 1999 in experimental preparation of this moment and in turn, Lost in the Sound of Separation couldn’t be more distinct and transitionally estranged from their peers.

Lost in the Sound of Separation literally propels itself from song-to-song, each possessing the fireball puissance of the band’s famed live prowess. Varying textures including aquatic Radiohead-like key and digital splice sequences lend the album platitudes of artistic refinement amidst its comprised spearheaded aggression.

This is articulated anger voiced from the exuberance of faith and desperation in troubled times, so much you hear it painfully in Chamberlain’s afflicted howls on “Emergency Broadcast: The End Is Near.” You hear it in the tempered gang chorals of the same song as well as during the marching bridge of “Too Bright to See, Too Loud to Hear,” where the band moans soulfully “Good God, can you still get us home…” You most especially hear it in the choky high-end note squeals tugged by guitarists Tim McTague and James Smith.

Underoath blends fried fidelity with arbitrary syncopation in a watermark performance. Brilliant and powerful with both ear-crushing distortion and caressing placidness, Underoath has pioneered their genre with the same grace and evolution as Isis and Between the Buried and Me have for their own breeds.