The album’s title, as well as much of the imagery presented throughout is in reference to the town of Lead, SD, which is an old gold mining town that is now the site of The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. DUNE is a leading-edge, international experiment for neutrino science and proton decay studies. Discoveries over the past half-century have put neutrinos, the most abundant matter particles in the universe, in the spotlight for further research into several fundamental questions about the nature of matter and the evolution of the universe. “A Black Mile to the Surface” is specifically a reference to this project taking place a mile underground. Imagery that relates the story of the album to this area is scattered throughout the album.
Reception
Commercial performance
A Black Mile to the Surface was a moderate commercial success for the band. It debuted the album at number thirty-three on the main Billboard 200. The album also entered the BillboardAlternative Albums chart at number five as well as the BillboardRock Albums chart at number seven. Overall, this marked a slight drop in success compared to its predecessors Simple Math and Cope, which reached number twenty-one and number thirteen on the main Billboard respectively.
Critical reception
A Black Mile to the Surface was well-received by contemporary critics upon release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 79, based on 20 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". In a positive review for Alternative Press, Brian Shultz wrote that the band "forge a newly lush, cinematic sound, unraveling detailed tales of characters with abstractly personal references" and highlighted the album's musicality: "Layers upon layers, from acoustic guitars to programmed beats, create a gorgeous and restrained, immersive landscape, culminating in beautifully serene moments like 'The Alien' and 'The Sunshine'." Adam Feibel of Exclaim! praised the album's "sonic story arc — a story about love, marriage, fatherhood and life's constant way onward — complete with an introduction, rising action, climax and falling action that finally wind down to a conclusive, satisfying end." PopMatters writer Chris Ingalls remarked that the album's sound "doesn’t derive from the airtight punk influences of decades past; rather, there’s an anthemic, widescreen feel to nearly every song... inviting comparisons to altruistic, mid-period U2, or even Coldplay." Other critics were less enthusiastic. Randall Colburn of The A.V. Club found that despite the band's stated intent to "strip back" their sound, "they seem to have gone in the opposite direction—with all the layering, samples, and shout-alongs, A Black Mile to the Surface is bombastic to the point of exhaustion." Carl Purvis was also critical of the album in his review for No Ripcord, writing that "For a band where constructing songs into rocket-fueled crescendos is their biggest strength, too often does A Black Mile to the Surface fail to take advantage of any momentum it builds, often taking the wrong fork on an ascent to a splendid finale."
