Code Orange. A band that’s permeated heavy music in recent years, with passionate fans and virulent detractors alike. Some swear by the early recordings under the name Code Orange Kids, insisting that their best material was from that era and it’s been all downhill since they removed the Kids from their moniker. They prefer the heart-on-sleeve poetics, pretty aesthetics, and cleaner Converge-influenced sonics of the Cycles EP and Love is Love… full length, over the apparently forced-macho works afterwards. But I just don’t see it. The Code Orange Kids material to me seldom amounts to more than the sum of its parts, often drowning in its influences. At its best, it’s an indication of a promising future for the band, at its worst, it’s a trite retread of sounds that have already been perfected by their influences. I’d rather just listen to You Fail Me. Still, their early work isn’t completely outside of what I love about the band. Their proficiency for blending abrasive parts with more tender elements was present, albeit manifested in a different way from their later works. Their theatrics were already strong, just as their eye for aesthetics. Even if it wasn’t fully formed, I could tell there was the making of something great here.

Then they give me what I wanted with the change to Code Orange, and the release of I Am King. I Am King shows a new confidence for the band that was bred from strain & isolation. The Thinners of the Herd viral marketing campaign that occurred concurrently with the rollout of I Am King showed the band’s desire to change paths, as if the name change didn’t signal that enough. They aimed to be the Thinners, the strong-minded mavericks, eliminating the Herd, weak-minded detractors. Sonically, I Am King brought in influences from more violent styles of hardcore, with punishing breakdowns adorning almost every song that seemed perfectly crafted to go off live with kids killing each other in the pit. When My World plays, no one is safe. The artsier influences from their earlier days are still present, with Dreams in Inertia being a loopy art-grunge soundscape and Starve interpolating elements of emo and shoegaze that wouldn’t have been terribly out of place in their other band, Adventures. Still, the shift to more masculine and outwardly aggressive hardcore alienated fans of the Code Orange Kids prior. Yet, Code Orange’s popularity skyrocketed with the release of I Am King. They embarked on a co-headlining tour across the U.S. with their friends in Twitching Tongues the fall of its release (I was lucky to have been in attendance!), and afterwards continued to play larger and larger tours, culminating in their signing with major label Roadrunner Records.

The band followed up I Am King with their major label debut Forever. Forever continued the path of tuffguy-aggression that I Am King introduced, much to the chagrin of the type of fans I mentioned in my introduction. But like I Am King, its machismo isn’t without a balance, and isn’t unwarranted. This time, Code Orange flirt with industrial synths in tracks like The Mud and Hurt Goes On. They masterfully blend punishing hardcore with influences from acts such as Nine Inch Nails, the ethos of which aligns with Code Orange’s vision. Forever stood out to me, and perhaps still does, as their finest work, being brutal just as much as brooding, offering more range than their prior works. I’ve mentioned already I’m not that fond of their early work, and while I loved I Am King at the time of its release and still do to an extent, I don’t think it holds up under scrutiny quite as well as Forever. I Am King, at times, feels like a blurry hodgepodge of breakdowns and fight riffs that don’t always have a clear purpose. Forever, on the other hand, provides more substance to its brutality.

I should note, I’ve mentioned the meta-commentary of their trajectory of musicians quite extensively because it’s served as a motivator for the band and is a theme that occurs in much of their music. They knew what they were doing with I Am King, they knew what they were doing with Forever, and they know what they’re doing now. While they remain confident in their endeavors, that doesn’t mean the negative reaction from fans hasn’t influenced them. Forever’s The New Reality, is perhaps the most direct statement on this matter yet:

“Are you the hammer or the nail? / It’s a slippery slope from what I can tell / The new reality says you burn in the fire / The new reality says your talks become stale… To the old guard drowning in its own tears shed / Let silence be your offering”

In a similar message to the prior Thinners of the Herd campaign, Code Orange position themselves as mavericks who champion their sound, much to the dismay of their detractors. In their follow up to Forever, their latest album Underneath, the band continues this theme even further.

Code Orange began the rollout of Underneath with the release of the titular track from the album, which bolstered a stadium-ready singalong chorus, a rather long runtime, and lyrics addressing the band’s career in a similar manner that I am now. It’s quite fitting that the track Underneath garnered such a controversial response given its subject matter and position as the lead single of the album. Many fans, myself included, loved the new track and were excited to see how it would fit into the new album’s structure and narrative. Just as many, however, reviled this song and saw it as either an affront to what made Code Orange (Kids) great prior, or as an example of why Code Orange like, totally sucks, man. Last I checked, this single had a 2.43-star average on rateyourmusic. A 2.43! That’s less than a 5 out of 10! The reception this song got is understandable, with the band at the peak of controversy coming off of a major label album that further alienated fans, issuing a single that on an uncritical glance could easily be read as a “sellout” song on their “sellout” record. Of course, neither the song nor the album ended up being as such. With Underneath, Code Orange continue to challenge themselves to continue to write creative & interesting music while also maintaining their ever-growing fanbase as they enter the upper echelon of heavy music.

The second single, Swallowing the Rabbit Whole, assuages any fears that Underneath would forsake the heaviness and weirdness that define Code Orange. The song is cut with references to the band’s older material (I definitely geeked the fuck out when I first heard the opening line THINNERS OF THE HERD) and introduces one key element of the album’s aesthetic: glitchiness. The guitar works have a strange computerized rhythm to them that is complimented by sudden stops that play out just as rhythmically as the riffs themselves. This Y2K-matrix-esque computerized aesthetic is present throughout the album.

March 13 2020. The album drops. There is an ongoing pandemic and the world is understandably in panic. Their record release show is cancelled. Code Orange still made the best of it and livestreamed the show to an empty crowd, but complete with full visuals and energy the same as if there were 1000 kids in that room. Sadly, we missed the chance to see a potentially legendary lineup of Facewreck, Machine Girl, Jesus Piece, Zao, Every Time I Die and Code Orange, but the night lives on thanks to respected hardcore archivist hate5six capturing the video. Still, I hope we get to see the show happen with the planned lineup eventually. The livestream show ruled and got a great reaction from fans, reaching far more people than would’ve fit inside the venue. Even the most vitrolic of haters found themselves saying to themselves “hey, this is pretty cool.”

So, what about the album Underneath? Well, it’s amazing. The seemingly disparate sounds of the first two singles, the stadium-ready title track and panic-aggressive Rabbit Whole manage to live in perfect harmony as the endpoint and first proper track off the album, respectively. The noise intro is no slouch either, though. Sets the scene perfectly for Rabbit Whole and I really loved hearing the beat from The Hurt Goes On again. In Fear follows Rabbit Whole and continues with the nightmare-mosh of the prior song. The trio of In Fear, Swallowing the Rabbit Whole and You and You Alone should satisfy everyone’s need for the hyper-aggressive Code Orange people have grown to love. Then comes Who I Am, an aggro-singalong fronted by Jami Morgan (who interestingly left the drumkit behind and took the place as the frontperson of the band with this album), which surprised me because I had no idea Jami could sing like that. It’s really fucking good. Who I Am both maintains the aggression of the opening tracks and offers a palate-cleansing before leading into possibly the most punishing track, and my personal favorite track of the album, Cold.Metal.Place. Good lord, that song is hard. It’s perhaps the best example of Code Orange blending beatdown aggression with cold industrial influences. The angular guitar work creates an excellent tension throughout the song which culminates in an amazing breakdown that makes me want to pulverize everything in sight.

At the midpoint of the album there’s Sulfur Surrounding, which initially released as the third and final single of the album during the week of album’s release. Admittedly, I wasn’t crazy about this song as a single. It’s well crafted, but when viewed without the album’s context it meanders a bit, there’s interesting parts but its purpose felt unclear. I was happy to be proven wrong about this song when viewed in the context of the album. The energy shift is much appreciated after the total annihilation of Cold.Metal.Place. It serves the album’s narrative well and works as a bridge between the two halves of the album, along with The Easy Way. The Easy Way is another heavily industrial-tinged Jami Morgan anthem akin to Who I Am. The Nine Inch Nails influence is stronger than ever, and it does it justice.

The second half of the album is structured like an album of its own, with Erasure Scan and Last Ones Left picking up the aggression. Erasure Scan employs more of the computerized glitchiness that the album exudes. Last Ones Left is probably the closest thing to a straightforward hardcore romp that this album offers and should satisfy those who just want some plain-ol’ mosh. Not that it sacrifices the eccentricities of this album, it’s still well fitting to its themes and aesthetics. I already know that Last Ones Left will become a live set staple, fan reactions to that song should be insane. Autumn and Carbine is a Reba Meyers-fronted track that aligns itself closer to straight up rock and it is a welcome shift in energy after the assbeater that is Last Ones Left. If you liked Forever’s Bleeding in the Blur, Autumn and Carbine is probably the closest thing to that. Back Inside the Glass offers more glitch-mosh in the album’s closing stretch, leading into A Sliver’s wonderful vulnerability before closing with the titular lead single. When the song Underneath first dropped, I was curious on how it would work as a closer after peeking at the tracklist preview. But it works perfectly, as a culmination of all the aggression and panic that the album built up towards it.

Underneath as an album feels like a culmination of everything the band worked towards throughout their career. Everything they had done up to that point, their ethics, their goals, all distilled perfectly into the bludgeoning nightmare soundscape of Underneath. As someone who has been following Code Orange extensively for quite some time now, I couldn’t be more satisfied with this record. And yet, I somehow feel that this is only the beginning. Here’s hoping to see more sonic insanity from Code Orange in the future. Down we go.

Go buy Underneath from store.codeorangetoth.com or Roadrunner’s store. Buy all their other records too. Might as well pick up a shirt or two, too. You deserve it.