Project Description
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Interview with
CHRIS DUDLEY
(keyboardist)
from
UNDEROATH
(14th January 2022)
Interview by Kayla Hamilton
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Photo Credit: Dan Newman
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“What’s also refreshing, too, is how dominating Underoath sound across the widescreen chaos of Voyeurist, one of their best records.” – Wall Of Sound
“Voyeurist is a statement that as a group they will always continue pushing their sound to remarkable new heights.” – Hysteria Magazine
“This album is undoubtedly Underoath’s finest work to date, stretching the gamut of everything that has come before it and reaching far beyond into the future. It’s beautifully visceral yet emotionally aware and it delivers the most honest representation of what this band is capable of.” – Everblack Media
“‘Voyeurist’ is a masterclass of contrast. Light and dark. Tender and violent. Harsh but sweet. Immediate yet ominous.” – GC Live
“The vocals are sublime, the music razor sharp. Consider it already on your list of top 10 albums of 2022.” – HiFi Way
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On January 14th, Floridian metalcore veterans Underoath have released their eighth studio album Voyeurist. Stepping into the studio for the first time without a producer and album two years in the making, Voyeurist is a landmark album that can be described as a beginning of a new era for a band that has been putting out music since 1999.
To find out how Voyeurist was curated over the pandemic, as well as the journey of reevaluation that the band when on during this time, AMNPLIFY caught up with the band’s keyboardist Chris Dudley.
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First and foremost, how is everything going now at the end of 2021 and stepping into what could be considered, almost back to normal in the US?
“It’s interesting coming out of 2020/2021 and kind of you know, kind of seeing stuff go back to normal but at the same time, I feel like there is this trepidation of it seems like stuff is kind of okay now but is it? You know it is one of those things where we are just sitting back and waiting and seeing.” “Overall very excited, we’ve been able to stay creative over this whole thing which has been good, get our record done which is good, live streams and everything. Overall, super thankful, we’ve all been able to stay healthy.”
There is still this undercurrent of do we, don’t we, do we take the risk…
“Yeah, I think all this kind of become, well it put a lot of stuff into focus. You know if you are in a good situation you will be able to put that into focus and you will be able to see that and if you are in a bad situation if you are in a bad job, or a bad relationship or whatever, COVID really put the magnifying glass on that. Overall, very thankful.”
On that, let’s talk about the new album. This album comes out on the 14th of January and also you guys have just released ‘Numb’ as well, with the 5 tracks on an EP. Let’s talk about the process of putting this album together over the pandemic.
“Yeah, so umm, we were actually supposed to record this album way sooner because it was coming towards the end of 2019 we found out that we had a tour with Slipknot scheduled for the Summer of 2020 and our idea that point was well the album before it came out back in 2018 so let’s try and hit the studio by 2020 to get the record done before we hit the road with Slipknot. Then February and March of 2020 happened and we realised the tour wasn’t going to happen but then we were stuck in a spot where do we still go in and record the record. We ultimately decided that we don’t want to record a record if we were not going to go on the road and tour with it. I think that we are very much a live band and we really feel that is where our music should live and we thought the idea of putting a record out and sitting at home was not very appealing. All in all, it ended up being a good thing because we just sat on the record for a year, over a year and I think that only one song from that initial batch ended up making it onto the record and it is way different than it actually was. So, like gosh I am so thankful for that because the record we have now is so much better than what we had before.
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I have heard the record and it’s awesome. As a long-time fan, I am definitely excited about it.
“It’s interesting doing these interviews because the general public hasn’t heard the record yet but being able to talk to people who have actually been able to jam it from front to back is always fun. Right now, it kind of feels like our thing we haven’t yet let out into the world.
One thing I did read about it, and it was put in the press releases, that it has a similar feel to They’re Only Chasing Safety, just with an adult mind approach. Upon hearing Numb, it has that old school Underoath feel but something about it feels so current. Can you elaborate on the adult mind statement?
“The thing with us is that we never go into a record trying to write a specific record or trying to write a specific song. One thing that is unique about this record is that this is the first record we have done without a producer, at all. So in that sense, this is the closest that we’ve been, and looking back in hindsight, when we did the songs and went into the studio for They’re Only Chasing Safety we literally wrote all the songs ourselves and the studio session for They’re Only Chasing Safety was like well we have these songs, let’s go now and record them. Every record after that we worked with a producer in some aspect. I guess the reason that people are saying that it has the feel of a record that we did 15 years ago is because it is the first record since then that we have done on our own. I think the fact that we did on our own, without a producer, in our own studios- I think that lends itself to us doing things and making decisions that may not have if we were working with a producer. It’s hard to really dissect a specific song or a specific moment and say well what’s the mindset behind that, but I think in general the fact that we were just sitting in the studio ourselves trying to make the best record we can, without an outside ear- I think that’s probably what you can attribute that to.
Was going without a producer something you were always planning to do with this album or was it something that the pandemic forced the band into?
More the latter, but I wouldn’t say it forced us to do that. I think that what the pandemic did is it opened our eyes to the fact that we could do it. I think that in general, the pandemic made a lot of people reevaluate a lot of things, not just us, everyone. Reevaluate the way they do things, reevaluate their relationships that they are in, revaluate their careers and all that so with that for us, we were realised that we could reevaluate how to make a record because we’ve always- it’s funny- every record post- They’re Only Chasing Safety we would go somewhere for weeks and weeks. Anywhere from 5-6 weeks and just shut ourselves away and make a record- away from home. We were going to be going back with Matt Squire, who did Erase Me, and we love him, he’s awesome but then there were some, well we weren’t really seeing eye to eye on some stuff as far as his role in the record and compensation and all that so we kind of just had a discussion and said hey, we’ve been doing this for a long time, we now all have our studios and other people are paying us to do their stuff. Tim is recording bands all the time, Aaron is writing with everybody and their mother, I’m doing film scores. We kind of just had this laughing moment where like, everybody is paying for us to do their stuff so why can’t we just make our own record? It was a little scary to jump into that but I’m really glad that we did. I’m biased but I think the record turned out really special. I’m stoked on it.
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Has it been a real confidence booster as a band to be able to go ‘hey we can produce this, we’ve done all this and now we’ve put this all together and it’s come out pretty amazing’, as a band do you feel like this is the beginning of something new?
Yes, it definitely I feel is going to speak to the way that we do records in the future. I don’t know if we are necessarily not going to go with a producer in the future ever, but now knowing that we absolutely don’t have to is great. We are already talking about what we are doing next, throwing around different ideas of maybe a full record or maybe an EP. In general, it is opening our eyes to the fact that we can just create whenever we want and we can write whatever we want and we can release it whenever we want, so why not do that? I think the future of us releasing music is going to look different because of this record.
When you released Numb, you released four other tracks with the single. What was the thought behind the decision to release all of those tracks at once?
The record was supposed to come out at the beginning of October and we had an entire roll-out planned for that. It was in motion. We had released one song and what we were going to do was we were going to release a second song I think back in August and we were going to announce the October release date. We got a call literally the night before that announcement from our record label saying ‘hey vinyl is actually delayed until the end of December, so you are not going to have any physical media to release the record with.’ It was literally a last-second decision to say hey we can release the album with no physical component basically or we can push the album to January. That was not a fun decision we had to make, but we made it and because of that, there are more songs coming out before the record that we planned on and you know, we had the whole Digital Ghost thing. We thought damn if this whole record is being pushed till January, what if we just had a live version of the record and release the entire thing before the record. We were just throwing it all out the window at this point and I’m super glad we did that, that was fun.
With all the great feedback from the releases as well as the positive feedback from the Digital Ghost stream, what has been the reception that you have noticed from the record?
The stream and the album and the live versions of the songs that were on the stream, I have said that the response is almost concerningly good. I guess what I’m worried about, I don’t maybe this is just creative brain being pessimistic but I’m like, it seems that everybody is liking it and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. Maybe only the people who are saying anything are people who really like our band and who are just going to like it. Maybe people just are not paying attention who might not be into it and are just like, well that band is dead to me or whatever. All that to say, everything we can tell says that the reception has been insane and that what we’ve been hearing a lot, from different people which is super interesting, is ‘this is the record that I wanted to hear after X, after Define the Great Line, after Lost in the Sound of Separation, after Disambiguation- everyone, for some reason, is saying that same thing: ‘this is the record that I wanted, at this point in your career and I’m so stoked that you have it now’.
I don’t know what that means exactly but I think it, distilled, it means that it’s a record that they want from us which is awesome because that is not ever what have in mind when we are creating. We’re just writing and thinking what is the thing that is going to make us laugh because we think it’s so good in the studio and sometimes people agree and sometimes, they don’t. It seems like, at this point anyway, that people are liking it. I haven’t checked a whole lot of Facebook comments, so maybe I should start doing that because that’s where all the negativity is [laughs].
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Underoath has always had a huge reputation for having an incredible live show. So how does a band like Underoath that is so live show focused adapt to doing things like live streams? What’s been the challenges? What’s been the positives?
We did the live streaming series back in 2020 called The Observatory and when were not sure at first if we even wanted to do any sort of live stream because of what you are saying. We are used to playing in front of a crowd and feeding off that energy and that’s where I think a good show comes from. We had seen a handful of bands that had done live streams and to be honest, we were just looking at going that just feels real awkward and it’s just weird. We were like if that is what a live stream is then we don’t want to do that at all, but we started having some discussions with TNSN DVSN, which is a creative group we work with, and amongst the band. We had the idea of how we would do a live stream at the end of the day, we would still feel it while we are planning. That is the whole thing for us. If we are not feeling it then we are not going to do it. That was where the idea came to make the stage a circle because then we are basically playing to each other which, that’s not the same as a concert but it felt more like there was energy in there and it felt like a really good practice mixed with a music video, but it didn’t feel awkward. That was a big lightbulb that turned on. Instead of playing to a flat stage to a non-existent audience, we just curve it all in and there is just this energy in there. That ended up working really well. Then the Digital Ghost idea was different but similar in that we wanted that vibe to be there and when we were coming up with what that was going to look like, that was different because it wasn’t necessarily a round stage, but it was a little different to what we are used to live. We were able to keep other things with that to keep the vibe as well. It’s different for sure but I think we have come to a spot where we know what we can do to make it to what feels good. At the end of the day, I think that’s what matters. Oh, and that we don’t screw the songs up, that’s a big thing.
You are starting touring again, with a US Tour coming pretty soon, have you been able to jump in front of an audience yet?
We did two festivals in the US that were basically makeup dates from 2020, but this tour we are doing in February will be the first actual shows that we will be playing, not festival dates, and will be the first show that we’ve headlined since 2018. So, it’s a whole new world, we will see how it goes.
Last question, I have to ask, any chance we will see you in Australia soon?
Yes (Laughs). We are itching to get back.
The new album, Voyeurist, is out now. For all fans of Underoath, this is an album that is exactly what everybody is waiting for from the band. Make sure you check it out and hopefully we will see Underoath on our shores sooner, rather than later.
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Buy VOYEURIST NOW
Underoath is Aaron Gillespie (vocals/drums), Spencer Chamberlain (vocals), Tim McTague (guitar), Christopher Dudley (keyboard/synth), Grant Brandell (bass), and James Smith (guitar).
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VOYEURIST
Track Listing:
01. Damn Excuses
02. Hallelujah
03. I’m Pretty Sure I’m Out of Luck and Have No Friends
04. Cycle ft. Ghostemane
05. Thorn
06. (No Oasis)
07. Take A Breath
08. We’re All Gonna Die
09. Numb
10. Pneumonia
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UNDEROATH
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Follow UNDEROATH
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Press Release 14th January 2022 (below) HERE
Heavy alternative torchbearers
UNDEROATH
return with ambitious new album
VOYEURIST
VOYEURIST OUT NOW on FEARLESS RECORDS
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