Underoath Delayed Their Next Album Because of Covid-19
Underoath electronics guru Chris Dudley was our guest on a recent episode of The MetalSucks Podcast. Among other topics, Chris provided us with an update on the status of new Underoath material, which would be the band’s first since Erase Me came out in April of 2018.
Saying that the band had planned to record their next album prior to their summer 2020 tour with Slipknot and then release it this fall, Dudley revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic put those plans on hold, allowing the band to take their time with new material and to let it develop without any set schedule.
He explained of songs the band are currently writing for their next record:
“It’s sounding sick and I’m so pumped. I want to put it out and go on tour but we can’t. [laughs] No, I’m very, very pumped on it.
“Full disclosure, our plan initially was to hit the studio before the Slipknot tour last summer [2020] and have a song out on that tour and probably put the record out in the fall. We kind of had this whole thing lined up. But then Covid came into the picture and we’re realizing, ‘Man, [we are] under no time table to put this thing out.’
“So we actually had a talk a little while back and we were like, we could sit on these songs for a bit and refine them and come up with other ideas and just kind of see if we push recording a little bit, what could come from that. Honestly, it’s been very fruitful. It inevitably happens, whenever you record an album, not long after recording you have an idea. You’re like ‘Aww man, I wish we would have done this thing ’cause that would have made it so much better,’ or you hear somebody work on an idea, like, ‘Whoa, what is that?’ ‘This thing I just came up with,’ and you’re like, ‘That would have been better than this song on the record, I wish we could just go back and put that on the record instead.’ And that has happened multiple times.
“Actually just today we were in our group chat and Tim [McTague, guitar] had written a thing and sent it to our group chat and I was like, ‘This might be my favorite idea that we have had yet.’
“We’ve got a lot of demos. We got together and recorded a bunch of stuff, we’re refining it and we’re just trying to figure out when the right time is to actually put them down and release a thing. Who knows what’s coming after that. There’s talk of rolling all of that into the Observatory and seeing what that looks like, potentially, maybe the recording process, maybe playing new stuff. We’re still figuring all of that out. But we will figure it out and the record is coming along mighty fine and I’m pumped on it.”
You can listen to our entire chat with Chris below or right here.
