Underoath
Define the Great Line

THE REVIEW

Twenty years later, “Define the Great Line” remains a small artistic miracle. At a time when Underoath could have simply repeated the success of “They’re Only Chasing Safety,” they instead chose to take a risk.

Dark, bold, and deeply human, the fifth album transformed the Tampa combo from a post-hardcore scene hopeful into a benchmark for an entire generation.

A record that never tried to be easy to love, and perhaps that’s exactly why it has never stopped being so.

More tension, more shadows, more silences than before.

The result is a tracklist of eleven urgent and sincere songs.

Of course, not all that glitters is gold.

It wouldn’t be long, in fact, before the band distanced themselves from their position within the so-called ‘Christian rock’ circuit. Something that might seem amusing now, but at the time caused a rather loud stir even among the less devoted fandoms.
There was the question of whether “They’re Only Chasing Safety” was just a façade, whether all those thanks to ‘everybody in the Church’ from Spencer Chamberlain during live shows came from a conviction to be respected, or were just a pathetic cry for attention disguised as the awareness of an addict.

Many of the lyrics that in 2006 might have seemed like prayers or spiritual confessions now sound almost like the diary of people already struggling with doubts, disillusionment, and guilt.

“Tell me what I’m supposed to do, but we both know that neither you nor I are really in control”

sings Aaron Gillespie in “A Moment Suspended In Time.”

“All of this could disappear in an instant”

echoes Chamberlain in “There Could Be Nothing After This.”

In retrospect, albums like “Define the Great Line” – together with the following “Lost in the Sound of Separation” – seem to recount not so much the loss of faith, but rather the loss of the ability to recognize faith in the place where it had always been assumed to exist.

That said, we are in the presence of not only one of Underoath’s finest records, but also one of the rare albums from the 2000s post-hardcore scene capable of continuing to speak, with the same strength, both to those hearing it for the first time and to those, twenty years later, returning to it in search of their own scars.