The Place After This One

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6.0

• Band:
  Underoath
• Duration: 00:36:36
• Available from: 28/03/2025
• Label:

• Mnrk Heavy

Streaming not yet available

With “The Place After This One”, the Undererath continue in their post-reunion artistic evolution, confirming an increasingly hybrid direction between post-hardcore, electronic and alternative rock. The current incarnation of the Tampa group has now refined its language, characterized by a constant tension between rhythmic impetus and melodic openings, with the latter as always guided by the clean voice of the drummer and leader Aaron Gillespie.
From the first singles, “Generation no surrender” and “All the love is gone”, the desire to push on electronic contaminations emerges, for an approach that combines nervousness and euphoria, adding new shades to the sound of the American band. “Devil” is another striking example: an energetic piece, almost magniloquent at times, which shows the intent to open up to a large audience even starting from a very smooth production.
The hybridization between heavy rock, performing and synthesizers more than ever pronounced is also interesting, but often remains fitted in a formula that struggles to take off. Compared to the latest pre-school works, with which the group had found a balance between roughness and very mature pop veins, the current songwriting of the formation is once again stopped on interlocutors, where everything is formally in its place, but without touching the shores of true great inspiration. The band seems to be looking for an incisive essentiality, of a contagious hours, but many songs do not go beyond an exercise in style without infamy and without honors.
The main obstacle of “The Place After This One” then lies in its sound performance: the guitars are all too compressed, similar almost to digital stittoots, while the drums of Gillespie, which has always been one of the group's factory brands, appears reduced to a cold rhythmic carpet that limits its dynamism. This flattens both the most excited and atmospheric moments, removing depth to an album that could have benefited from a more organic and less artificial sound.
However, there are some important episodes: “Shame” combines guitar groove and an exquisitely radio chorus, while “Spinning in Place” affects for a structure that expertly alternates tension and release.
However, however, there does not seem to be a song capable of imposing itself as a new classic of the repertoire, a moment of authentic brilliance that breaks the linearity of the album. The pop/electronic component often takes over the arrangements, leaving little room for more articulated instrumental solutions. In particular, the guitar work is affected, which rarely stands out by inventiveness, resulting more a sound outline than a real expressive engine.
Even the darkest drifts, which once conferred depths of the records, here seem more phone calls, while we remember that the previous “Voyeurist”, another chapter on the whole non -excellent, closed with the cathartic climax of the excellent “pneumonia”.
Ultimately, “The Place After This One” is an album that in short, confirms the management of the Underathaths without going beyond a sort of comfort zone. The alternation between restlessness and melody remains the trademark, but the hyper-modern production and the lack of truly distinctive songs make it more a transition episode than a step forward, bringing out the feeling that Gillespie and members have now shot their best cartridges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oijtnuyb-