Voyeurist

“I loved it immediately because you know exactly what it means, but it’s not a real word.” That’s Underoath drummer, co-lyricist, and co-vocalist Aaron Gillespie talking about the title of the Floridian metalcore band’s ninth album. “Almost everyone living today scrolls through social media, living vicariously through each other in this sort of sad way. It’s even weirder when you’re watching people you don’t even know.” That observation prompted Gillespie to pose deeper questions about our collective relationship with social media: “What does that do to your psyche?” he asks Apple Music. “How does that help create the you that you are now?” It all became a jumping-off point for the lyrical self-reflection and human examination on Voyeurist, an album that Underoath recorded and produced themselves for the first time in their 20-plus year career. Below, Gillespie comments on each song.

“Damn Excuses”
“This is an angry, cathartic song that’s steady and fast, and it’s over before you know what happened. Lyrically, it’s kind of a frustrating moment. We all grew up in organized religion-centered homes. Many of us have deconstructed how we were raised, but your family is still your family. You’ve changed, but the people in your life haven’t, and you’ve still got to love and respect them. But it gets harder as you get older and you become more self-aware.”

“Hallelujah”
“The title is sort of sarcastic. We have a song called ‘It’s Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door,’ from our 2004 album, and it’s got this choir part in the bridge. We had the idea to do something like that on the chorus of this song, as opposed to [vocalist] Spencer [Chamberlain] or I making a typical Underoath chorus. So, we called some friends over to our studio one night and just made sort of a mock choir. It felt very DIY, and I like to think that we still try and do things that way when it comes to crafting music after 20 years of being a band.”

“I’m Pretty Sure I’m Out of Luck and Have No Friends”
“We wrote this one together in an Airbnb in Florida during the height of the 2020 mayhem, which is not usually how we do things these days. Usually, songs start on a computer, you know. I really like the sample in the beginning with the 911 call. Maybe this guy is doing drugs and coming in and out of consciousness, or maybe he’s just in some kind of weird headspace. We found it on YouTube and recorded it into a cheap handheld microphone, and then I chopped it up to make the sample you hear.”

“Cycle” (feat. Ghostemane)
“Have you ever seen the Netflix show Dark? It’s incredible—and ‘Dark’ was the working title for this song. The lyrics were kind of written around the idea of that show: How do you know what’s real and what’s not? Around the time we talked about getting Ghostemane on the track, I randomly got a direct message from him saying, ‘I just wanted to thank the people that I grew up listening to. Thank you for your music.’ And I was like, ‘Well, actually, thank you. But also, I require your services, sir.’ Such a crazy coincidence.”

“Thorn”
“I love this song so much. The lyric has to do with explaining yourself to someone with a bit of an apology, like, ‘I’m a thorn in your side,’ but you’re also saying, ‘I can’t help it—this is who I am.’ It was weird because this song took so many iterations to get where it is. When you make your own music, you inevitably self-edit, which I think is healthy right up to the point when it’s not. Then you just start going in circles. This song felt like that at times, but I feel like we got it in the end.”

“(No Oasis)”
“We had the idea of doing an interlude but making it more of a song. I love when Trent Reznor puts a record out and there’s something on there that might be noise for three minutes, but it feels really purposeful. This was an attempt at that, but we gave it two verses and a chorus. That part where you hear someone walking down the stairs is actually Spencer walking down the stairs, and we recorded him laughing too. These days it’s easy to create stuff like that digitally, but we did it the old-fashioned way.”

“Take a Breath”
“This was one of the first songs written for the album. I want to say we did it in February of 2020, right before the pandemic hit. At first, the opening riff was exactly like a Deftones song, until our guitar player came in and pointed it out. But he already had the fix, which is what you hear now. I love this song because the bridge kind of feels like Tool. Listening to their latest album, Fear Inoculum, I got really inspired by that rolling tom thing they do on the drums.”

“We’re All Gonna Die”
“Again, the lyrics reference the really conservative religious background we all come from, where people always say, ‘I’m praying for you.’ I’ve been guilty of saying that to people when I was in high school or in my twenties, and it wasn’t true. It’s something you say that’s almost like a pat on the head. This isn’t a knock on anyone’s religion—it’s more like calling out people who are disingenuous. The song is saying that we’re all in this together. We’re all gonna pass away at some point. Don’t say you’re going to pray for me.”

“Numb”
“This one started with our keyboard player, Chris [Dudley]. He brought in that drum and bass thing in the beginning, and we wrote the song around it. Most of the song is one drumbeat, which is really rare for Underoath. I do topline songwriting stuff for other artists, and the chorus lyric is a line I wrote for Glitch Mob two or three years ago that they ended up not using. We had tried writing the chorus for ‘Numb’ so many different ways, but that was the one that stuck.”

“Pneumonia”
“I think this is my favorite Underoath song ever. Our guitar player, Tim [McTague], his dad had been sick with cancer and ended up passing away from pneumonia, which was a complication of his original ailment. His dad was a real pillar of the band in the early days—we practiced in their garage and everything. Tim was really close with his dad and wanted to memorialize him. He wrote the lyrics to the back half of the song, which he’s never done before. Usually, Spencer and I write all the lyrics, but Tim wrote these from his dad’s perspective. It’s really powerful and special.”