Underworld – Second Toughest In The Infants

YouTube Link
Spotify Link
Wikipedia Link

I believe everybody has one band that really hit them in their teenage years. I have a few, myself. Nine Inch Nails. Front Line Assembly. The Headstones. The Chemical Brothers. Fluke. Underworld. I am probably missing a few there. Perhaps I am fortunate that the groups I list here are all still releasing new music. Some, like Nine Inch Nails, I appreciate for every new song and album, finding enjoyment in how their music and style evolves. Others, like the Chemical Brothers and Underworld, I find myself more hoping they will eventually release something that resonates with me as much as their music from two or three decades ago still does.

This is hardly fair, but we all have those experiences and feelings in our pasts that we desperately hope to repeat and recreate. It happens with that great bottle of wine you had at a restaurant ages ago. You spend time chasing down that same bottle or something similar, in the hope that it will be as impressive as it was that first time.

We might as well wish for lighting to strike the same exact spot, in the very same manner, once more. These experiences get enveloped in hyperbole and retrospection; mummified by nostalgia and the gauze of time to a point where they deified. Nothing can ever hope to live up to something we have placed on such a pedestal.

Underworld’s Second Toughest in the Infants is very much the album version of this for me. Underworld still puts out new music, and I eagerly listen to everything they release in the vain hope that the new stuff will mark me just as much as this fourth album released back in 1996 has.

This is one of my Desert Island albums. I would happily be driven mad by only having it to listen to for the rest of my days. This is an album that just flows from one great song to another from beginning to end. The layered detail of the music created by Rick Smith and Darren Emerson are downright beautiful. The spoken word and nonsensical meanderings of Karl Hyde have an impact that should be impossible.

The songs go through highs and lows, from hard tempo trance, to soft acoustic guitar, and along so many paths in between. It contains 8 tracks long, but it is a proper and lengthy album that takes nearly an hour and a quarter to play straight through. Nearly every song on here is an epic in its own right. This is especially evident on the first track, titled Juanita: Kiteless: To Dream Of Love. The track is a trilogy of songs that blend and evolve into each other over the 16 minutes run time. It may be my favourite opening track of any album I have listened to.

And the Album stays this amazing for its entire length.

I am left chasing the dragon; hoping that every next release from this band will hit the level for me that this album has. This is not Underworld’s fault, obviously. It is mine, for holding Second Toughest in the Infants to an impossibly high standard.

Cheers,
Evan

There is a sound on the other side of this wall
A bird is singing on the other side of this glass
Footsteps, concealed
Silence is preserving the voice

Bonus viewing: Underworld Live at EDC Las Vegas 2026 (Official Full Set)