heavy metal

Wow, this song started it all for me. Before this, hardcore was the heaviest music I listened to, and it was melodic at that. I heard this band on a compilation called Fools Rush In Where Angels Dare Not Tread, put out on Takehold Records, which is now sadly defunct. Even sadder though is the state of the band, who pulled a musical turn-around for the worse harder than any other band I know of, (I have heard people refer to the Cave In in a similar way, but I never really listened to them). When I first heard Underoath, it scared me honestly, but at the same time I could not stop listening to it. Their music was something pure and gloriously defiant to everything that was wrong with the world I was getting to know in more disillousioned fashion thanks to adolescence. It was them, and a few others who gave me a window into seeing that I could still be Christian, but in a way that I respected. Their songs not only took a very agressive stance against things like rape, (google the lyrics for this song), and suicide, but they also challenged stale fellow Christians to walk their talk. The album this song is from, Act of Depression and the subsequent Cries of the Past were and still are albums that mean very much to me because of their combination of lucid, meaningful lyrics and the considerable quality of the music itself, (I think, and many agree that Cries of the Past is one of the best unknown metal albums - I posted on it here). They are so important to me that I'm not even going to sell them on ebay, where the original CD's are going for $50, and I am broke as a joke. They even influenced how I like to play guitar, this song was the first that I taught myself, and I still tremolo pick all over the place, (more prominent on the second album though). Ok, enough talk, more rock.

Underoath - Innocence Stolen