What exactly is The Place After This One? It’s the brand-new Underoath album, sure, but for vocalist Spencer Chamberlain it’s so much more: an overwhelmingly uncertain concept that has been weighing heavy on his mind…
It feels rather appropriate – poetic, even – that Spencer Chamberlain is in transit for the duration of this interview. The Underoath vocalist is sitting on the band’s tour bus as it’s driving them to the release show for their 10th full-length album, The Place After This One. He’s perched on one of its benches, so there are glimpses of the city through the window behind him as the vehicle makes its way through, almost as if it’s the city, and not the bus, moving. Spencer is, understandably, a little discombobulated at first. The band were just on tour in Australia with Alexisonfire, and got stuck there for a few extra days afterwards because of a storm. They had a day and a half off, and then jumped straight onto this U.S. tour with Papa Roach and Rise Against that will last about a month. There is, it seems, truly no rest for the weary, just constant motion from one second, minute, hour, day, week, year and place to the next.
That’s why it feels so appropriate that Spencer is in the process of going somewhere while talking about the new Underoath record. Before, when they were still a devout Christian band, a title like The Place After This One would automatically suggest Heaven – or Hell. Some kind of afterlife, either way. These days, it really just means whatever (and wherever) comes after this very moment in time – as well as all the uncertainty that comes with that.
“The title came up before we wrote most of the songs,” he explains, “but it is open-ended in that way. You could be talking about life after death, but you could be talking about life after this this bus ride. You never know what’s next. What’s after Underoath? Is there life after Underoath? Do we do this until we’re too old to walk? Are we are we going to be onstage like The Rolling Stones, you know what I mean?”
Those kind of questions, Spencer says, have always been a part of Underoath, dating back to when the band first started in Tampa, Florida in 1997. It’s just that the context has changed. At first, they believed they had God on their side, then they weren’t so sure, and now they definitely don’t think that’s the case. But those profound existential ideas have remained a constant throughout.
“Those thoughts are wrapped up in our whole career,” he continues. “This band has always been on the brink of breaking up, and we’ve already broken up once. We’re happier and healthier than we’ve ever been now, but you always have to wonder what is next. None of us know. And is it even worth worrying about? Because you can’t control it. You’re in control of yourself, but that’s about it. You could be driving to the store tomorrow and a drunk driver hits you – you’re not behind his wheel, you’re only behind yours.”
It's appropriate, then, that Spencer is on the move as he delivers that morbid analogy, because it’s a perfect metaphor for how life – and life in a band – isn’t static. Everything is always in a state of perpetual flux, because that’s human nature. It can also just end at any given moment, when you least expect it. The songs on The Place After This One don’t just address those themes thematically, but also musically. Underoath have, after all, never been afraid to experiment and evolve, and The Place After This One is no exception. Taking in and combining the many different genres and styles the band have explored over the years, it’s fraught and frantic and in-your-face, burning with an energy and enthusiasm bands who have been together a fraction of the time they have often struggle to find.
The big difference, though, is the circumstances that inspired these songs. For while this album is still asking questions – big questions, profound questions, existential questions – Spencer says this is the first record where he feels like he’s actually made it through the traumas and troubles that inspired the songs before writing them.
“Every album that I’ve ever been a part of, whatever turmoil I was in, I was still in it and writing while I was in it, and kind of treading water in the ship, so to speak,” he explains. “With this one, being on the other side of the bad stuff that we were writing about was a lot more freeing and a lot more honest. I think there are some things you’re not ready to talk about when you’re still in it, because it’s hard to admit or it’s embarrassing or whatever.”
It also means – for Spencer, and co-vocalist/lyricist Aaron Gillespie – this was actually an relatively easy and painless (pun intended) album to write. He’s adamant to point out that the trauma didn’t “just go away”, but the perspective of distance both had with it when making this record nevertheless afforded them an unusual and unfamiliar clarity.
“When you’re in the storm, you can describe the storm, but you’re really trying to get out of it – you’re freaking out, you’re pulling the sail in, you’re trying to keep the boat from capsizing,” he describes. “But once you get through the storm and get to the shore and look out at that ocean, you go, ‘Fuck, that was crazy.’ You could probably write a book about that because now you’re clear-headed. You’re safe. That’s kind of where I am, and where Aaron is as well. We’re in a good spot. I’m proud of everything we’ve done, but you don’t always enter the studio in a really good spot, and this time we were. And that’s why I love this record so much.”
Don’t be fooled, though. Just because he was (and is) in a good spot, it doesn’t mean he has the answers to all those questions he was asking when writing these songs. He still doesn’t know what the future holds, or where, ultimately, the place after this is. Nor is he able to stop wondering about it or asking questions that can never be answered.
“We’re not experts,” Spencer chuckles. “We were pretending to be experts when we were kids, and we weren’t. Nobody knows, right? It just begs more questions. How do we live without that fear? How do we live in the present? How do we disconnect and worry about right now, and not who or what you’re seeing on the internet or Instagram? And there are people with anxiety that are really worried about tomorrow, and people wondering how they’re going to pay their bills, or if their family is falling apart, or are if they’re going to have cancer in a few years. It’s something we all deal with, and no-one has the answers to any of it.”
He’s right. Nobody knows what’s next. Not in the long-term, anyway. But as the bus comes to a halt and Spencer is ushered off, he knows where the place immediately after this one is: onstage, to rip this impending album release gig. Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess. After all, the present vanishes as soon as it arrives.
The Place After This One is released March 28 via MNRK Heavy
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