As powerful and extreme as Underoath have appeared on their previous albums, they open up a whole new listening experience with the release of their live album, Survive, Kaleidoscope. For me, nothing makes a band more honest and genuine than the production of a live album.

For Survive, Kaleidoscope, the performances are real, the fans are true, and the emotions are unrehearsed. Of course, you’ll find that music engineers try as many post-production effects as possible to enhance the Underoath experience, but it’s still amazing nonetheless.

From the beginning of “Returning Empty Handed”, you can almost feel the hairs on the back of your neck start to stand on end. Underoath have always done a great job creating buzz for their performances. I remember seeing them with Taking Back Sunday and they opened their set with a sound clip from the movie 300 where King Leonidas angrily yells “This is Sparta!” As you can imagine, the crowd went wild. It survives, Kaleidoscope still captures a bit of that magic alive for me.

It’s great to hear Underoath still playing They’re Only Chasing Safety “classics” like “It’s Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door”. However, Aaron Gillespie’s voice isn’t exactly what you’d expect compared to studio album quality. I’m not going to complain that he can’t hold that line “My knuckles have turned white…” for a full fifteen seconds like he does on the studio recording. It’s just not realistic when he’s also in charge of keeping up with everything in Survive, Kaleidoscope.

Spencer Chamberlain’s screams in Survive, Kaleidoscope are manly and as crazy as they should be. I’m sure fans would be utterly disappointed if they couldn’t recreate that quality on Underoath’s live album. However, they made it sound amazing. I could listen to “Casting Such a Thin Shadow” over and over again and have nightmares about that man’s moan.

I was very excited that they decided to include “A Boy Brushed Red Living in a World of Black and White” on Survive, Kaleidoscope, as that is my personal Underoath favourite. I wasn’t lucky enough to hear that song on Taking Back Sunday, so getting the secondhand experience of Survive, Kaleidoscope made my day.

Another thing that really interested me was the backing vocals of their guitarist, Timothy McTague, on “You’re Ever So Inviting.” I had no idea he was the high-pitched voice behind “We ripped the pages from left to right!” What a great voice he has. This discovery makes me wonder why he hasn’t gotten on the mic for other Underoath albums, let alone Survive, Kaleidoscope and Define the Great Line.

Underoath is certainly a crowd pleaser. No doubt about that. From the first time I saw their music video for “Reinventing Your Exit” and they were rocking like crazy, I immediately felt that they embodied a very important quality of live performance. For Underoath fans who haven’t bought this album yet, Survive, Kaleidoscope won’t disappoint; not even remotely