Underoath released their first album in eight years titled Erase Me earlier this year. The lead single from the album "On My Teeth" had the word "fucking" in it and the band's Christian fanbase weren't too excited about it. Frontman Spencer Chamberlain tells Loudwire that Underoath hasn't been a Christian band since 2009 or so and that they even stated that publically but "people just weren't paying attention."
Now Chamberlain says that he thinks having a band all be religious and all singing about it might be a little bit ridiculous.
“So a band is a bunch of personalities. It’s like being married… If anyone’s been in a relationship, trying to keep your girlfriend happy or your wife or your boyfriend or whoever… is a lot of work. Add a bunch of people into that, all different personalities, that’s a lot of work.
But then put a guideline, a rule, overtop of it saying ‘now we all have to believe the same thing.’ That’s like saying… you’re in my band and I’m like ‘I’m going vegan and so is he and if you don’t you’re out of the band.’ And you’re kinda like ‘That’s not really how humanity works.’
Putting a religion on a band; we’re all six individuals, that’s really unfair. What if someone decides to go down a different path? What if someone has questions? What if someone maybe just doesn’t feel right with stuff anymore?
And that pressure was really hard, because if you questioned that within the band, there was kind of this facade and smoke and mirror effect going and like, I know you’re not telling me how you really feel because you don’t want to cross that boundary of sounding like you’re not a Christian anymore, and same with this guy. No one’s talking anymore; there’s all this inner turmoil because we couldn’t talk about shit.
I just think it’s really inhumane and I don’t think religion should be in music. I don’t really care what Maynard [James Keenan of Tool, etc.] believes in, I think his music is great.”
Personally, I don't really care if religion is or isn't in music. Extol is a phenomenal "Christian" band and Behemoth is a phenomenal "satanist" band. Both sing about their beliefs, both make awesome music, and neither is shunning me as a fan for not believing what they believe in. So basically as long as you're not being an asshole about it, then who cares?
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhPgPNz_EHs][/youtube]
