Amidst the rumbling bass of one Whole Wheat Bread emanating beneath us, Planet Loud find themselves seated in a corner of a ‘school gym-like’ vip bar of Brixton Academy, chatting to hoodied and bleary eyed Underoath bassist, Grant Brandell. As various bewildered band members / interviewer hopefuls wander to and fro, we get to the gritty of sprawling latest album ‘Lost In The Sound Of Separation’, discuss its message of hope in desperate times and uncover the reasons for the band feeling stronger and closer than ever..

Planet Loud – We’re catching up with you guys before you take to the give it a name stage, it’s a slightly stripped down version of the fest than before, when you guys last played in 2006. What are your thoughts on this festival and the fans that you have over here?
Underoath – It’s cool. It doesn’t really feel like a festival because we’ve been doing the tour over Europe. So it’s more of a really good tour. We toured with Innerpartysystem the last two tours, Taking Back Sunday and Thursday we’ve toured with before..

Planet Loud – Let’s get straight to the latest album, ‘Lost In The Sound Of Separation’. It’s been out for a while so the fans have had time to digest it, there’s a lot of depth to it. It heaves with more aggression than ever yet there’s a real fragility that speaks out too. What kind of a place were you at, as a band, when you were writing this record?
Underoath – Well we’d toured pretty much over the last two and it just got to a point where we felt like we needed a fresh start. We had released ‘Define The Great Line’ and we’d done ‘They’re Only Chasing safety’, what was weird was that when ‘Define The Great Line’ came out we were kind of sick of ‘Chasing Safety’ and wanting to go in a different direction.

We still ‘liked’ ‘Define The Great Line’, liked the songs and stuff, but it was more about just trying to write better and push ourselves. We’re trying to make it better overall. We became more comfortable with each other. Where everyone wants to go and what everyone’s thinking. There wasn’t too much pressure there, so we were able to do what we wanted to do.

Planet Loud – There’s almost a sense of the pre-apocalyptic within this album, a foreboding, this desperate want to cling onto hope amongst despair and keep searching for purpose. Could you give us some insight into the ‘message’ of the album as a whole or is it more a lot of different things?
Underoath – Well it’s more a lot of different things. I think that you can definitely get the hope theme from it. I think it’s like going from a really bad spot to fix it yourself, to go through with it. I mean Spencer deals with the majority of the lyrics but it’s involving the fact that you might be always struggling..

Planet Loud – You say Spencer deals with most of the lyrics, but you might be able to give some thoughts, cause personally I’ve always valued the self-honesty of your lyrics. You’re not afraid to put yourself down as much as you are pick yourself up..
Underoath – Yeah, they’re definitely easy to relate to. It’s never just a ‘one particular thing’ kind of deal. It’s about being honest and the fact that we ARE just normal people, who go through the same crap that people go through every day, you know? We’re just trying to be honest as a band.

Planet Loud – Even though there is that escaping hope there, would you say this is the darkest Underoath album so far?
Underoath – I guess musically it could be. I don’t look at it as dark, I look at it as something new and fresh. We got a little bit more experimental, more than we had before and that’s how it all came out..

Planet Loud – My favourite moment on the album is in ‘We Are The Involuntary’, from two minutes onwards. You have all of this background chatter and the vocal delivery with the lyrics, represents this whole mass struggle of outside influences getting in the way and pushing you down. Could you talk a little over where you were at with this song and what you wanted to get across?
Underoath – I think that has the record title in it and everything, although lyrically we don’t really like to say ‘this song is about this or that’, because it specific to something. I think it’s cool that some of the kids get whatever they want to get out of it, you know?

Planet Loud – The final song on the album, ‘Desolate Earth..The End Is Here’ is a really powerful way to close the album. It’s something completely different for you guys as well and a very emotional moment. Did that song always feel like it fitted last on the album?
Underoath – No, honestly. We were putting all the tracks together once we were done recording and we were weirdered out because we had ‘Too Bright To See, Too Loud To Hear’ and then the last track, which were both kind of mellow. But I think it just flows the best that way and everyone seemed to agree with that. It was definitely a last minute thing but the right way to go, we have a very ‘instinct and feel’ way – do it and if it feels good then that’s the way it should be.

Planet Loud – What would you say you’re most proud of with this album? Maybe a particular song, the way you wrote as a band?
Underoath – I think the whole album. In general the recording process. Being able to go into the studio and be like ‘yo, let’s try this, let’s have a cello on this’. It’s not really one thing, it’s not meant to be a ‘track like’ record. More of a whole experience.

Planet Loud – A big part of the band definitely seems to be that movement from each album to the next, not sticking in the same place. Moving forwards and trying things out. Is this wanting to experiment something natural to you?
Underoath – It’s not like a common thought in our heads but at the same time it’s definitely talked about as an open thing. It isn’t like ‘let’s try this, let’s throw everything in there’ but we definitely want to try and do new things. We have the in-the-studio ‘on the spot’ moments too, like Spencer not even doing vocals..

Planet Loud – I get the impression that this is a band that has worked damn hard to get where it has. How much work went into the latest album and what would you say was the hardest sacrifice you had to make?
Underoath – Um, I think we go into a studio having what we have…sacrifice wise.. I honestly can’t even think of anything. Everything has felt like a blessing. The weather, the people, where we’ve been. With ‘Define The Great Line’ I was literally in a really crappy hotel, there was the studio and really cold weather for six weeks. But this one, it was great. We were around people we love and places too. Really comfortable. Um..I had a broken leg!

Planet Loud – We can put that down as a sacrifice, right? (laughs) Going back for a bit to ‘They’re Only Chasing Safety’ – It’s got the sense of a defining album for you, what do you feel when you listen to it now?
Underoath – I haven’t actually listened to it in a long time, you know? It’s one of those things where artistically it’s like ‘ehh’ but at the same time that record kind of got us to where we’re at. It was such a new thing, we had three new members. It was also very rushed. It was fun though because there were a lot of new attitudes and obviously we went from a heavy metal to pop-rock kind of band. We know kids will like to hear old songs, but then it’s what can we play that we’re okay with, that ‘we’ can have fun with. Because if you’re up there playing songs that you don’t really want to play, it can affect things.

It’s funny, we’ve been playing ‘It’s Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door’ every show since that record came out. We recently started talking like ‘Why don’t we NOT play the song?’..

Planet Loud – In terms of the future, is it mostly touring for the focus, or are there thoughts on a new album?
Underoath – We have three guys in the band that are having babies this year, so we’re taking a lot of time off. We have tours, but we have already started talking about the new record. I think a big thing that we liked on the last record were some of the more meatier songs. But we’ve also been talking over maybe doing an instrumental E.P? New tracks. Something to think about..

Interview by Jim Hall