A punishing, nightmarish wall of white noise that takes no prisoners…
‘Here comes the pain,’ read the headline for Code Orange’s debut Kerrang! cover in autumn 2017. And we weren’t fucking kidding. Stripping hardcore back to its skeletal brutality, then tooling it up – like some sort of sonic Terminator – with the darkest, most oppressive elements of industrial metal, the Pittsburgh band’s career thus far has felt like the establishment and refinement of a nightmare soundtrack to deep trauma and violent catharsis. Even as the world gets more terrifying on the daily, they’re three steps ahead.
A gang of sonic extremists who very much live their lives in line with the hard edge of their music, their live shows have become the stuff of smash-mouth legend. Treading on – and often over – the thin line between exhilaration and injury, they’re unrelenting exercises in sheer aggression, audiences relishing the strange intimacy of shared pain. As their mythos continues to grow, even the hardest brutalists enter the fray with their guards up.
From the shapeshifting electro-grunge of Bleeding In The Blur to the sheer viciousness of Forever, the band lean heavily on 2017’s LP of the same name. The oppressive, hellish volume of 2014’s I Am King still acts as a reminder of the terrifying and primitive sounds with which Code Orange Kids musically came of age, while the likes of 2018 single The Hunt stress their eagerness for the next step.
Frustratingly, completion of album four comes at the expense of those who hoped to catch their new reality at Bloodstock Festival or on the short accompanying UK run, with ‘scheduling conflicts’ seeing their complete cancellation. Hopefully they’ll be busy poring over calendars in an effort to rectify that disappointment as soon as possible.
Looking on the bright side, though: it’s further confirmation that Code Orange remain as utterly uncompromised or as uncompromising as ever; a promise that their new evolution will be as bloody and beautiful as the last.
Pack a mouthguard for their inevitably punishing return. No half measures. No pulled punches. No body left unbattered.