Before last week, I’d never set foot in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and although my sightseeing while inside city limits was minuscule, it did offer an opportunity to keep things fresh. My attendance at the No Fix Tour represented my 8th time seeing Underoath live, now in six different cities.
I say this as a biased fan, but also as someone who has now attended more concerts that I can easily recount: Underoath consistently puts on one of the best live performances on the planet. Their latest stop at Piere’s Entertainment Center, a relatively nondescript mid-sized venue in the middle of Indiana, was still cause for wonder and respect, even after all these years.
Even aside from my own fan-boy outpouring, the spectacle of Underoath’s live performance is well documented. What often seems to go unspoken is their ability to stack the bill. Over the years, I’ve seen Underoath bring along bands like As Cities Burn, Every Time I Die, mewithoutYou, letlive., Saosin, The Devil Wears Prada, and the list goes on. The build-up to the main event is always worth watching.
The No Fix Tour once again provides a fresh group of faces for Underoath fans. Limbs, Veil of Maya, and Dance Gavin Dance all provide a worthy warm-up for heavy music fans with a diverse set of sounds. The early rounds are truly won by Dance Gavin Dance, a band in the midst of their own renaissance, ready to drop a new album this year as they roar into their second decade.
PODCAST: Listen to our interview with Chris Dudley of Underoath on the band’s No Fix Tour
Yet, once again, Underoath has a way of making the lead-up feel pedestrian as they take the stage to flashing lights, shadowy synthesizers, and scattered images flashing across the screen behind them. When Spencer Chamberlain takes the mic, unleashing the opening screams of “On My Teeth”, pandemonium ensues.
What makes this latest trek for Underoath so exciting is the potential for exploration. The band’s Rebirth Tour focused on two albums from 2004 and 2006, while this current tour celebrates the release of Erase Me while still making room for tracks from other albums like Lost in the Sound of Separation and Ø (Disambiguation). The night is structured around new tracks, but is littered with fan favorites and unsung tracks from the past.
For a band so tied to the nostalgic memories of fans, it’s a treat to watch the crowd sing along to new songs like “Rapture”, “No Frame” and “Bloodlust”. Even unexpected performances of tracks like “A Moment Suspended in Time” and “Paper Lung” elicit delight from the crowd. For a band with such a deep well of diverse tracks to draw from, it makes every performance fresh and exciting, no matter how many shows you’ve attended.
While it’s true that golden oldies like “Writing on the Walls” and “Reinventing Your Exit” still steal the show, there’s no denying that this new incarnation of Underoath is moving forward. Their shows consist of polite nods to the past coupled with a renewed energy to expand their sound and their audience – all while playing with a sense of urgency that is unmatched by their peers. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s going to be a while before I tire of seeing Underoath live.
by Kiel Hauck
Kiel Hauck is the editor in chief at It’s All Dead. Over the past decade, he has been a contributor for multiple online and print publications and was most recently an editor at PopMatters. Kiel currently resides in Indianapolis, IN with his wife and their imaginary pet, Hand Dog. You can follow him on Twitter.
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