Audio Mixer: Chris Lord-Alge.

Photographer: Jeff Gros.

After overcoming some critical personal shakeups to produce 2004's excellent THEY'RE ONLY CHASING SAFETY, Florida's Underoath fulfilled the immense expectations set by that album--to transcend their audience's demands and still uphold their Christian metal roots--with 2006's DEFINE THE GREAT LINE. The Band undertakes this follow-up effort with such unbending ferocity that they leave most of their pop/screamo contemporaries in the dust. Vocalist Spencer Chamberlain removes himself from the sugary trappings of his brethren frontmen, gracing even his melodic passages with the angst and chaos that underline his more lungbusting turns. The band behind him has learned enough lessons from legitimate, vinyl-only, handmade-sleeve '90s screamo to make more learned listeners realize that these guys are as close to the real deal as anyone. Combining bracing melodies with unchecked aggression, Underoath may have made the defining album of the movement with DEFINE THE GREAT LINE.