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As a band that have, in essence, been around for a decade and a half, Underoath have faced many an obstacle. Yet back in 2006, they were forced to come up against their worst yet, and they found themselves head to head with each other. Two years later, after almost calling it a day, the band have returned with one of their strongest albums to date. On their first tour in the UK since Taste of Chaos 2006, we got to speak to guitarist Timothy McTague about coming back from the brink, making 'Lost in the Sound of Separation' and what it''s like to be in our current music industry.

OS: 'Lost in the Sound of Separation' is your third release. After such a successful second album, was there ever any pressure from external sources, for example, the fans, to create an even better record?
Tim McTague [guitars]: From our own selves was probably the only pressure that we let in. We don't really let the label, or press, or kids, really define what we do. We don't really write our albums to go 'oh man, I hope the people who liked our last album like this one', or 'what would the kids that bought this album want', or the label, or 'what would radio want?' We just do what we wanna do, so I think the only pressure we put on ourselves was from us saying we needed to step it up and outdo what we did last time.

OS: Your last record 'Define The Great Line' was allegedly named the greatest Christian record of the past century. What's it like to receive that kind of title?
Tim: I didn't know we had that title until right now! I don't really think of much Christian music really, so I don't know what to compare it to, but that's good to know. That's an honour, I guess. But I don't think that we really know, or care, or really think about stuff like that. We just write music and it really makes us happy when people like it, but at the same time, it's not really why we do it. That's cool that someone said that, but there's probably a thousand other people that disagree with that, so it's all good!

OS: So, how did the writing process with 'Lost in the Sound...' go?
Tim: The writing process was pretty much how we always write. It's very sporadic. We don't really sit down, and go, "okay, let's write a whole record. Let's take a month off and write ten songs." It's more like... even now, we're writing for the next record; we already have stuff and ideas. So, when we go to record a record, it's not like, "oh, what are we gonna do?!" It's like, "let's everyone bring what they've been writing over the last year or two." It's really cool in that respect.

OS: Did you have any particular aims for this third album?
Tim: Really just to write a better record. Sales-wise... The music industry is hurting, there's not a lot of money left to put into bands. We didn't really care about sales; we assumed that this record would sell less than the last one, so we really don't care about that stuff. It's more just like, "let's write a record that, when people hear it, say how much we've grown from the last record." That's the biggest thing, you know? We want people to know that we're progressing. I want people to listen to Underoath and say, "Yeah, every record is something different, something new and something more than what they could've done when they wrote the last record."

OS: After listening to all three of your albums in order, you can really see how much you've progressed as a band and how much your music has changed over the years...
Tim: Yeah! I think the biggest difference is from ['They're Only] Chasing Safety' to 'Define The Great Line'. I don't think it's as big of a difference from 'Define The Great Line' to 'Lost in the Sound' because I think with 'Define The Great Line' that was our defining record. That was when Underoath had decided and found who they want to be. Now we are that band, so it's more like an extension and progression on who we became with 'Define'. It's not like, "oh, let's do something completely different." It's more like, "we did it. We did what we wanted to do with that one record", and now, when we make more records, we're gonna be able to take the confidence that we gained from there and do exactly what we want to do now. Then, when we get there, we'll push ourselves further.

OS: What inspired your when writing for this latest album?
Tim: Our inspiration was life, music, culture, conversations I've had with people, everything. As far as planning to write, I knew I just wanted to write some music that made people think and provoked some sort of emotion or thought. Whether that be a happy moment, or a sad moment, or a self-glorifying moment, or a self-conflicting moment. I just wanted something to pull at someone else's brain in some way. Lyrically, I didn't write anything - I just helped write all the music. Spencer [Chamberlain, vocals] and Aaron [Gillespie, vocals and drums] write all the lyrics. They just wrote, kind of, in their journals. They wrote for two years and when we had all of the songs written, they looked in their journals and asked how these songs and those words fit together. Just what fits and what makes sense, and then just piece it all together.

OS: You've previously said that it was strange going into the studio for 'Lost in the Sound...' because you still liked 'Define the Great Line'. Did it feel as though you had to be more patient with the creation of 'Lost...' because of that?
Tim: Not more patient, but more... out of the box. We went in and the songs came really quick - the first song and the fourth song on the record, we wrote in a day. It was one of these things where we'd get the songs and, boom! They'd be done. Then it would be like, let's take these songs and really make them something different - we had the basic idea and then wanted to branch off that. It's kind of like building a house. We had built the foundations and built all the rooms really quick, but then it came time to decorate. We wanted each room to be different. We wanted to paint this room this colour and have this kind of furniture. But, in this one we wanted really weird stuff and weird furniture, then this one we wanted a weird Asian theme... It's the same kind of thing with people's homes; we got the structures up fairly quickly because we felt that we could cohesively write better than with 'Define...' but then we spent a lot more time being patient with the finishing touches, the arrangements, the feels, kinds of effects and layers we put in. That stuff we spent a lot more time on.

OS: Back in 2007, the band left Warped tour due to personal reasons and conflicts within the band. How do you think that time period has effected the band and record since?
Tim: I'm sure it's effected us in a lot of ways that we don't even know. I think, in a lot of ways, leaving a tour always has a fairly large impact. During that time we broke up and reformed; for a two week period we weren't even a band. Going back with this record, it was one of the first times we went into the studio with a healthy friendship, and so it was a really important time for us. I think that shows in a lot of ways; more than not just in the idea behind it all, of writing music that we care about, while writing in a way that we care about each other. This studio experience compared to 'Define The Great Line's was so much better, from where we recorded, to how we recorded and the way we all got along. Everything about it was a lot cooler.

OS: For this latest record, you chose to use the same producers [Matt Goldman and Adam Dutkiewicz] that you've used in the past. Was there a particular reason for this?
Tim: Matt and Adam are both really great dudes and they get really great sounds. They do a really great job doing a lot of different stuff and they really helped us get where we wanted to be with 'Define The Great line'.
They're not really producers in the sense that a lot of bands have; they don't come in and help change your songs and tell you what to play. We would bring them our songs and explain how we wanted them to sound and feel and they'd say, "Okay! We'll try this and this. What about this sound for guitars, because this will make it really..." So, they're like assistants and really help to assist us in getting our vision out in the exact way we want.

OS: How has this UK tour been so far?
Tim: Awesome! We've been out for eight days; this is our seventh show. All the shows, except for two, have been sold out, and even those that haven't been were full and really fun. It's just been a really fun time.

OS: With the last time that you were in the UK being on the Taste of Chaos tour in 2006, did you have any expectations for the crowds?
Tim: No, honestly, the expectations have been met and exceeded. We played the Astoria last night and it was sold out, whilst the last time we played our own show in London it was only 500 people. The first time we came over, we played the small room here and now we're playing the bigger one and it's sold out! It's just a really good time for us. I mean, they're not huge shows compared to some other bands that come here, but for us, they're some of the biggest shows we've ever played. It's just a really cool thing to just be here and having a lot of fun and getting a lot of support in a country aside from our own.

OS: You've always been a band that has a strong lyrical sense. Is this an important aspect to you?
Tim: Yeah, I think musically and lyrically, we all try to make that a point. It's like, why have something that doesn't make anyone feel anything? I think, you have an opportunity to make someone feel something, and question what they believe in, question why they're here, question their purpose and start thinking about all these important things in their life. Or, you can just sing a song about some dumb girl. I'd rather put something in someone's head that's more intelligent than that, lyrically and musically. I'm not saying that we do anything different, just making sure that what we put out has substance is really important to us.
OS: It's a lot easier for fans to connect with a band, especially live, when the lyrics actually mean something to them.
Tim: Yeah, totally! We've never really had a ... major 'break', I guess, like Paramore, or My Chemical Romance, or Fall Out Boy. We didn't come out and, all of a sudden, be huge. We just have this solid group of people that come out every single time. They're like our family, rather than, "Oh yeah, I heard this song on the radio so I went to their show once." We've doing this since 2004, so we're almost at five years now of having really solid tours and good shows, and I think that it's not because we write great music or put on a great live show; I don't think we do any of that stuff better than anyone else. It's just, what little we do is honest and people see it when they see us live, they hear it when they hear our music.
And whatever it is they know that it's real. I think that's what it is; it's a lot easier to connect with someone that's being honest about themselves, about their music, about everything, rather than saying, "Oh, well, that's what they did and they got big, so let's do that." I think you can tell when someone's trying to write music to get big vs. the music that's in their heart.

OS: On that note, your album was mixed by David Bendeth, who specifically said that Underoath have a "disdain for corporate rock". Would you say that ties in with the importance of your music being honest?
Tim: Yeah, totally. I mean, David Bendeth actually sat us all down when he was mixing the record and said, "This record's great and you can do really well with it, but if you give me one more week and let me write one song that's a "hit", you guys will be platinum. You'll be one of the biggest bands out there. " And he actually asked us to write an extra song on the record, just to be a single to go to radio. We were like, "We'll write!" So, he set up all his stuff and we just wrote a cool song... and it never got on record. [laughs] It was just one of those things where it was like, "dude, come on!"
OS: It almost seems fake...
Tim: Yeah, yeah! Like, he's a great dude, but he views music totally differently to us. People view music by like, "This record rules because it's awesome and when I listen to it, it makes me feel something crazy." Or, "This record is great because it's sold a lot." That's how people measure successful music; this record was successful because it changed people's lives, or this record was successful because it sold a lot?
For us, we measure success as... I'd rather have 200,000 or 400,000 people tell me that something we did was so meaningful to them that no one can replace it, rather than have 4 million people tell us that that one hit song and the video with the really pretty girl in, that was great.

OS: So, what you say being in Underoath is actually about?
Tim: Yeah, just being honest and wanting to change people's lives for the better. Wanting to make Christians question why they're Christian: if you're a Christian because your mom told you to be, or your friend told you to be, then you're not a Christian for the right reasons. We want Christians to really figure out why they're being the way they are. We want people who are searching to search harder. We want people that are hurting to search for hope. We just want to provoke positive change in everyone that we meet. That's the biggest thing.

OS: Would you say you have anything more to achieve?
Tim: No. Nothing. I mean, we've achieved everything We never thought we'd play in front of 2,000 people in our own home country or our own hometown, let alone in London! We achieved all of our goals three years ago. All this other stuff? This isn't an achievement, this is just like, "what the crap?!" [laughs]