Underneath’s new album, From the Gut of Gaia, seethes at humanity’s degradation of the natural world.
The stereotypical image of an environmentalist is that of a tree-hugger; someone who wears Birkenstocks and thrusts petitions in your face and smokes weed defiantly in front of ExxonMobil headquarters. Underneath’s brand of environmentalism hits like a vengeful earthquake, rumbling up from the planet’s depths to swallow the skyscrapers, oil rigs, banks, and mansions in a molten maw filled with gnashing stalactites and hungry tongues of fire. On “Stochastic Terror,” guitars chug and drums jackhammer while Joey Phillips roars, “You are nothing but a fucking pig/Siphoning the fucking beauty out of everything,” like the Lorax turned misanthropic after seeing one too many forests leveled in the name of profit. This is some of the angriest music out there, but it’s not angry just to be angry; it’s angry because the world is dying, angry because those with power and influence would pick the corpse clean and flee to Mars before they would administer CPR. The Lorax spoke for the trees; Underneath bellows for the earth itself.
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