Title: Lost In The Sound Of Separation
Artist: Underoath
Tooth And Nail

With Underoath there's nothing as poppishly straight-forward as verse-chorus-verse-chorus. Rather, the listener enters into an aural cauldron, thrown around in a Dantean nightmare of pummeling music. From the start, it's an industrial pounding of screamo hardcore, with machine gun-fast drums, tectonic chords and sometimes almost atonal guitar lines. But while it begins thrashingly, subsequent listens reveal the consideration behind the noise, and the fact that the songs are almost orchestral in their structure, as they constantly shift shape. So in A Fault Line... the insertion of quieter, brooding moments throws into relief the fury bookending them. Emergency Broadcast... starts with fuzzy bass, tribal drumming and great sweeping clouds of guitar before eventually morphing into a passage of softly pulsing guitar notes across which cuts a strangely rapid procession of snare hits, before some traditionally metal rapid riffing brings the song full circle. The Created Void, while starting simply enough with a four note guitar line, builds into a furious crescendo, with baroque trills and drums exploding like cluster bombs, before ending in a whimper of clean chords. The two vocal styles on the album, (Spencer Chamberlain's growl and drummer Aaron Gillespie's more emo whine) further add complexity and contrasting textures. However, it's hard to take Chamberlain's guttural mock-horror vocal style seriously. Like body builders grotesquely distorted by their sport, although there is undoubtedly discipline and power behind it, it's appealing only for the, literally, hardcore fan. Sure, it's typical of the genre, and matches the relentlessly dark lyrical material (that is used here to highlight rather than revel in sinful human nature - see album title), but, unlike, say, the compellingly angst-ridden vocals of Mewithoutyou's Aaron Weiss, Chamberlain often sounds merely silly.