Photos by Jacob Moniz (@jacob.moniz)
On its latest world tour, metal band Underoath wanted to remind its fans of where the group got its start, while celebrating the 20th anniversary of the successful album, “They’re Only Chasing Safety.” The set begins with what appears to be a dingy living room and gradually evolves into an expansive, modern show with intense lighting effects provided by SONUS Productions out of Moorestown, N.J.
“I always try to tell the story,” explained Lenny Sasso, Lighting Designer for the tour and Director of Touring Accounts at SONUS Productions. “Essentially for the band, this tour was telling the fans, ‘This is where we came from. This is how we wrote the record.’”
With the minimal initial visuals, Underoath gave a glimpse at the physical practice space in which “They’re Only Chasing Safety” came to life. The setlist featured a playthrough of the album, then added newer music as well as more lighting and production elements along the way. By the time the end of the set neared, Sasso described the visuals as “full tilt,” complemented by a pair of X-Laser Skywriter HPX M-10 fixtures.
“We built the intensity of the show visually, and then later in the set during the new music, the lasers pop in around three-quarters of the way through the set. All of a sudden, laser effects appear during one of the new tunes and it creates a wild energy that carries all the way through the end of the show,” Sasso said.
For one of Underoath’s newer songs, “Teeth,” Drew Mercadante (SONUS Productions / Supervoid), Lighting Programmer for the tour, explained that the band wanted a “really heavy, full-red breakdown,” and the lasers outperformed expectations.
“I had never used the lasers in full, pure red before, so I was initially a little worried about whether they’d punch through enough,” Mercadante said. “But no, it was super bright. My favorite part about it was that the universal color preset of the lasers matched so well with the other lights and I didn’t have to adjust much to match the rest of the rig.”
Bill Charles, touring Lighting Director for the tour and SONUS Productions’ Operations Manager, also gave his perspective on the design from his spot at FOH on the road with Underoath.
“It was really fun because the fans have been listening to that album for 20 years and were really on board with the initial throwback-style look. From my experience seeing every single show, it’s a nice progression from that to the more modern, clean design. Then when the lasers kick in, it just takes it over the top,” he said.
In addition to the visual impact that the X-Laser Skywriter fixtures added to the set, they also gave the SONUS crew impressive design and workflow flexibility, especially considering the evolving nature of the set throughout the tour run.
Charles explained that Underoath is the type of band that is always moving forward creatively and thinking of new ideas, both musically and visually, so the show design changed somewhat frequently as a result.
The band’s guitarist, Tim McTague, who was the band member most involved with the show design, worked with Sasso to lock in the original visuals, and then worked with Charles to enhance the show even further once the tour was underway.
Sasso explained that Mercadante and Jason Giaffo initially programmed the entire show on grandMA2—including the Skywriter HPX M-10 lasers—and then Charles easily made the on-the-fly additions and adjustments as needed. This was all possible thanks to X-Laser’s Mercury firmware built into the Skywriters.
“The lasers were timecoded to the point that Bill had the ability to just punch up and add new stuff on top of the base show file, even on the same day of a show,” Sasso said.
Charles explained how this happened throughout the tour, saying, “We’d just show up for soundcheck and the band would mention that they are adding a song to the set and want the lasers to be used on it. So, I’d interact with Tim and he’d show me what they were thinking, and Mercury made it possible to have the lasers be a part of those new visual concepts. Whether it was timecoding or totally punting for a song using preset pages, palettes, and executors it was no problem at all and really enhanced the tour.”
Moving forward with future projects for Underoath or helping other SONUS clients tell their stories, Charles and Sasso hope to put X-Laser fixtures out on more tours. Why? Simplicity.
“It’s just so easy to use,” Charles said. “Mercury makes it so that if you can program a light, you can program a laser. The fixture profile works the same as a moving light in terms of intensity, position, color, gobo and beam. It’s really simple to just touch up the pallets as needed.”
Sasso added his perspective and aimed guidance at lighting designers who perhaps have considered lasers but have yet to take the leap, saying, “I integrate [the lasers] into my shows as if they’re just any other kind of fixture and I love using them. Now knowing Mercury and its capabilities, I wouldn’t be intimidated at all if I were doing it for the first time. The fact that you can integrate the lasers with the console directly just makes it worlds easier than any other laser control system.”
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