Code Orange: remakeable, but still unbreakable

What’s Really Underneath?

BLUE GRAPE MUSIC

Metalcore saviours swap the pit for a rave

REMIX RELEASES COME just below b-sides and rarities compilations but above cover albums in terms of music you want from a band. Yet Code Orange are a more tantalising proposition, given their masterful application of electronic elements on their previous efforts. On top of that is the fact the subject of the remix is the flawless Underneath, an album whose potential impact was so cruelly hamstrung by Covid seemingly hitting the day of its release.

While What’s Really Underneath? undoubtedly serves as a stopgap before the next extraordinary thing the Pittsburgh quintet are cooking up – if last single Out For Blood is anything to go by, it’ll be worth the wait – it’s an absorbing experience in its own right. Much like Blood Incantation’s latest ambient release, this album unmistakably has its creators’ fingerprints all over it, despite lacking anything approaching the caustic guitar-based assault they’re known for.

What Lies… isn’t so much a remix album as snippets of Underneath’s anthems given a whole new lease of life – from the songtitles and running order to the desired emotional and sonic clout each delivers – with an abundance of variety across the board. Club.Cold.Metal swaps Cold.Metal.Place’s atmospheric turbulence for a squalling, stabbing stomper that fully underlines the band’s membership of the Trent Reznor Fanatics Society, while Who I Am is transformed into Prismatic Shame’s minimalistic chants. The ominous drone of Down We Go leads into A Life In The Box as it builds to a wall of nightmarish tones, its heightened drama offset by the dulcet twinkling of A Thin Reflective Line.