Reinventing Your Exit by Underoath is one of the major hit singles from their most successful album, They're Only Chasing Safety. This song is probably the most fit for mainstream distribution due to the singing to screaming ratio. Aaron Gillespie handles most of the verses and choruses with clean vocals while Spencer Chamberlain simply interjects a phrase or two inside of Gillespie's melodies. Since the release of Reinventing Your Exit, this sing then scream method is one of the most common among screamo and metalcore bands to date.

The common lyrical subject matter for They're Only Chasing Safety appears to be about the sudden chqnge of a relationship or relationships. Underoath isn't breaking any new ground there. Reinventing Your Exit follows that subject mainly based upon the idea that relationships can evolve or sour as quickly as they came. Let's pick apart a few of the paragraphs from Underoath's song.

The first verse is almost hard to comprehend without following most of the other words in the song. Underoath sings "12th and Hyde on a Sunday, feeling like we're gold. And we're nothing short of invincible" to express that something isn't completely real about what's happening at the moment. Of course most people know about the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and his transformation from normality to insanity. This first stanza of Reinventing Your Exit straddles the same concept. We're not really who we're pretending to be and we think nothing can go wrong.

In the second verse, Underoath's words are "It's you and me on a Monday, the lies that we told. This is where we both go numb now. You broke my heart again this time. You're fading now, you crossed the line." Now things are starting to unfold inside Reinventing Your Exit. If we draw comparisons between the first and second verses we can see that this invincible feeling has disappeared from one day to the next. Aaron first referred to characters as Mr. Hyde characters and now they're just "you and me on a Monday." It's a pretty cool metaphor that seems like a common transformation that occurs among most teen relationships.

Now the chorus to Reinventing Your Exit sheds even more light on what's happening in Underoath's song. The words "You've got me up against your wall" makes the point that the speaker isn't in the position he wants to be. Aaron Gillespie could be trying to make the point that some relationships are more imaginative feelings than actual love and compassion and so we feel backed into a corner, helpless.

The rest of the words in Reinventing Your Exit just solidify this "helplessness in a fake relationship" idea. The words "We all want to be, want to be somebody. Right now, we're just looking for the exit" tells how the speaker wishes that he could leave. Another one of Underoath's phrases, "Reaching out for a hand, it's not here But you're not here, but you're not..." talks of how the speaker doesn't feel any connection between his or her mate. The words are all pretty simple, but very well thought out.

They're Only Chasing Safety by Underoath is a great album to say the least. I've known a lot of my friends to complain "It's just not heavy enough" and "There's too much singing." Those sound like some pretty bull excuses to me. The melodies are insanely catchy, the screaming is intense, the musicians are talented, and the songs are memorable. You can find all those characteristics in Reinventing Your Exit.