Album Review: Code Orange – Under The Skin

Listening to Code Orange has always felt like sitting through a horror film. Layering on the dark twists, mind-bending revelations and skull gouging payoffs, it’s a truth the band themselves have been comfortable with for some time now. Where early releases came on like gore-drenched slasher flicks, though – or, in frontman Jami Morgan’s words “a haunted house where you’ve signed the waiver” to be thrown from pillar to post – recent years have seen them strive to unlock a hands-off psychological insidiousness to match that earlier bludgeoning ballast.

The graduation from sweaty, in-your-face club stages to more gaping arenas removed from the audience (Coachella is still calling) was the necessity that initially bred such invention, with fourth LP Underneath its most compelling realisation thus far. Worldwide lockdown, however, has seen them perfect it.

Charting July 30’s Under The Skin livestream event from the Theatre Factory in their home town of Pittsburgh, PA, this ethereal “live” album finds the quintet stripping some of the most monstrous slabs of sound in their back-catalogue to their skeletal essence. Songwriting previously lost beneath the avalanche of metal, industrial and hardcore influence is allowed to come to the fore. More than ever, their vision works its way under our skin.

Appropriating the classic MTV Unplugged set-up on the night, they made the format their own with a Mud-TV logo cheekily emblazoned in the bottom corner of our screens and a performance that harked back to grunge’s glory-days while loading on electronic motifs to live in the here and now. Stripped of the evocative visuals, the performance feels even more powerful.

Bleeding In The Blur – already one of CO’s softest compositions – is an easy way in, but the wheezing electronics and weeping strings on Who I Am hooks us properly. Autumn And Carbine becomes a twangy electro-country nightmare. Guitarist Reba Meyers’ rich voice is an obvious fit, but as Jami barks up on Ugly and a weirdly distended version of Only One Way it adds yet another abrasively haunting dimension.

Their cover of Alice In Chains’ classic Down In A Hole (“an example of music capturing deep despair” Jami explains in the “quarantine” interlude) is a fascinating centre-point, with Layne Staley’s decades-old lyrics poignantly resurrected for 2020. It feels far less urgent, though, than the closing salvo of their own invention: Sulfur Surrounding smouldering away, Under The Skin irresistibly pulsating and suffocating outro The Hurt Goes On (labelled here as “hurt 3”) dropping curtain in a glitchy tangle.

There’s something thrillingly post-apocalyptic about this loose-strung format: a promise that even as the world stands still, Code Orange can’t stop pushing forward.

Verdict: 4/5

For Fans Of: Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails

Under The Skin is out now via Roadrunner Records

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