Underoath - Voyeurist (but in a totally different context this time)

K, so i'm trying to get a handle on this multiple pages thing. There's me doing album reviews on this page, and then there's me trying to sell you records on the Bottle's Music page, but also me attempting to confine my ranting about dumb crap on the Bottle the Curmudgeon page, not to mention the Bottle's Album Club page that i still don't know what to do with, but today was hell and i realized that what i haven't done is specifically NOT tell you a story. So yeah, i'm not going to tell you the story of why i needed to replace the slipmat on my turntable before tonight's record, except to say that that's exactly why we're cracking open my procured on clearance copy of Underoath's Voyeurist tonight, it has an unsullied slip mat inside. Not a Game of Thrones reference, unsullied is the appropriately unfortunate word choice. 

I have a fair few Target clearance albums i was considering offering up for sale over the weekend, and i still might, but i really liked Voyeurist the first time around so i don't feel bad about sticking a needle into it at all. 

Now, if you don't like Djenty Screamo-Core, or just plain don't know what any of those words mean, then you will not like this. I do like it, but even i honestly thought "why am i not just listening to Saosin" twice during the duration of Side A. Fine teeth on that comb if you remember that that's a specific reference to Deftones in relation to mediocre Nu-Metal, Metalcore being Nu-Metal's dorky but affable little brother, the Aaron Carter trying to keep up with Nick as they meander the backstreets, if you will. 

But damned if this isn't just plain old-fashioned music to my ears. It's good, and not in a way that needs much qualification. 9th album, so yes they've had more practice than most, but it sounds fresh and vibrant despite sitting firmly inside a genre staler than ship's biscuits; so stale all the lead guitarists invented Sandlecore (yes, i invented that neologism) on shore leave. 

Voyeurist though, this isn't stale at all. It's vibrantly dark, morbidly energetic, inventively caustic, hauntingly self-aware, and not even remotely concerned about sounding completely derivative of Along The Shadow. For the record, no i don't think Underoath intentionally tried to sound like Saosin's almost never happened magnum opus, there's a whole lot of ideomatic Underoath here, but when it does sound like its 5 year older brother it unquestionably does so. 

Sometimes, at the end of a crummy day, you just want to hear some pasty whiny millennials wrestle with their faith in the face of human mortality while playing a guitar solo on an electrified barbed-wire fence before falling down dead from pneumonia. It's what i like to call "cathartic irony." 

Now look, if you detest Metalcore then i'm certainly not saying Underoath's Voyeurist is going to win you over, but i think we can safely say that Voyeurist is up near the very top of what you can do with Metalcore as a primary color on your palette. 

Then again, i still want to hear Saosin's Along The Shadow as a chaser, so maybe it's the Post-Hard rather than the -core that does it for me. To each their own, but Voyeurist is definitely worth a listen if you need to relocate your old but freshly lit on fire slip mat to the nearest dumpster. Thanks, Underoath. Turned out not silly after all.