Underdark: For A World That No Longer Exists

“Any time you make any piece of art you want people to be moved by it. Is it too much to say I want tears? I want people to fucking feel something fundamentally.” UNDERDARK vocalist Abi is sure to get her wish with her band’s stunning new album Managed Decline. A multi-generational story of the devastating effects of Thatcherite neoliberalism painted onto a canvas of post-hardcore, black metal, shoegaze and more, the sophomore full-length from the Nottingham-based five-piece is as emotionally stirring as it is harrowing and visceral, and a step up even on the already quite brilliant Our Bodies Burned Bright On Re-Entry that came two years before it.

“I think it’s just generally more focused,” offers guitarist Ollie as he reflects on the band’s evolution from one album to the next. Along with the aforementioned Abi and bassist Stig, he joins us from the band’s van parked up somewhere in Newcastle on the second in a run of five dates supporting UK hardcore outfit CRUELTY. The album is just hours from release as we speak, brought into the world by the unwaveringly excellent Church Road Records, and it’s clear that Ollie and co. share our assessment of it being their best work to date. “I don’t know if we necessarily had the capability to write this album four years ago, but we’re getting there now.”

“I think the word focus is really important,” emphasises Stig. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen ourselves as a black metal band really, but that was the label that we always had and it always followed us around. And I think we went into Bodies… with that in mind so it came out as more of a black metal album more than a lot of the shoegazey post-rock elements that we like, whereas I think on these new songs we’ve definitely found that sound and what we think our sound is.”

Ollie is quick to add that having Abi’s concept in mind as they were writing definitely heightened that focus. Managed Decline follows the residents of a post-industrial town in the Midlands through three generations – an ex-miner who drinks himself to death after he loses his job, the fatal overdose of a mother and heroin user, the horrific pimping of a child to feed an addiction, and ultimately the escape of said child to offer a bittersweet note of hope as the town she leaves behind is still falling apart. These aren’t just stories to suit an aesthetic, these are real life things that have happened and continue to happen in this country, told with care and nuance and an insistence on making the listener think.

“I wanted to write something that only a band from the Midlands could really write about,” explains Abi. “I think it maybe ended up a little bit broader in scope than that but the plan was that I wanted to do a concept piece and I wanted to tell a story. We all grew up in these sorts of places and witnessed first-hand what living in a post-industrial town is like and some of the places that it can lead to and that was sort of what fell out of me.”

“I guess the real challenge was keeping the message coherent and not pulling punches,” she continues. “Because the temptation with some of it is to shy away from it or put a bow on it almost and that’s not really the case. Ultimately, even if things do get better, there’s going to be a really painful period of growth and change, so it’s just unrealistic to say ‘oh, and then x and y happened and it was all better’.”

But if things are to get better? “I think a lot of it has to come through community and everyone realising that we’re all on the same journey and stuff like that,” suggests Stig. “The people that are being harmed the most are the ones that are essentially voting for it a lot of the time as well and I think through community efforts and stuff like that people start realising what’s actually going wrong. I don’t think you can be angry at these people as well, they’re just ill-informed a lot of the time.”

That last point is a refreshing and important one; nothing is gained from ignoring or looking down on those who think differently to you, from pulling out of the festival with the dodgy band on the bill, for example, or humiliating the kid in the BURZUM shirt who might not know any better. UNDERDARK – much like one of their most obvious contemporaries in the recently and dearly departed DAWN RAY’D – are willing to have the tough conversations, to bring their message into spaces where they might not have everyone onside, and ultimately to challenge perspectives. Abi sums it up nice and succinctly. “If you shun them what’s the end result of that? They’re just gonna go and find more extreme extremists.”

And it’s not as hard as you might think. Whether it’s how they see themselves or not, the band are generally lumped most quickly into the black metal scene, which carries a very specific reputation for being home to a lot of problematic thinking. But this hasn’t really been UNDERDARK’s experience. “We’ve been on many a black metal line-up and the bands on that line-up know what we are like, or what I guess some people know us for which is the political side and things like that, and none of them ever had any sort of issue,” offers Stig. “To be honest we’ve had more positive recognition of that rather than negative.”

Perhaps part of it’s because they’re not alone; we’ve already mentioned DAWN RAY’D and they’re just one of many others in black metal and beyond who have joined UNDERDARK in releasing fantastic politically-engaged records in 2023 alone, although Abi is keen not to make too much of a positive of that. “I think it’s pretty symptomatic of everything getting worse really,” she clarifies. “It’s good that a lot of people are getting motivated and engaged and feel compelled to speak up about stuff that is affecting them or their loved ones, but the fucking root of that is there is more stuff affecting them and their loved ones which is not that great overall. That being said, it’s really nice to hear someone channel righteous anger at the powers that be rather than righteous anger at their ex-girlfriend or something.”

To be clear though, UNDERDARK aren’t “just a message band”, as Abi puts it as we come to conclude. Managed Decline is an outstanding record for reasons far beyond the story it tells; the band have put just as much into the music and while there isn’t really such thing as a breakout star in this particular niche of the world the results should still be more than enough to maintain their steady rise through the ranks of the UK underground. “Ultimately we’re not young, we’re not doing this because it gets us laid or anything,” smiles Abi with her final thoughts. “This is something that we do because it just genuinely means more to us than life a lot of the time.”

Managed Decline is out now via Church Road Records.

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