Hot on the heels of their raucous 2020 album Underneath, Pittsburgh metallers Code Orange have dropped a new single, Out For Blood.
While it's not their recently teased collaboration with The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, the track sees the five-piece explore new musical territory, with vocalist Jami Morgan offering poppier-style vocals in the verses, in between his usual brutal screams. “When they go right, we go left,” he says. “Code Orange is Out For Blood and we are just getting started.”
But overall, there's little respite from the band's usual brand of no-holds-barred, glitchy heavy metal; guitarists Reba Meyers and Dominic Landolina serve up a selection of energetic drop-tuned electric guitar riffs, before Meyers lets loose with a killer guitar solo at the 2:30 mark, which is no doubt fueled by her monstrously vast pedalboard.
The track's accompanying music video offers a glimpse into the band's chaotic live shows, which – in a June interview with Guitar World – Meyers said have resulted in members taking “guitar headstocks to the forehead”, and suffering “broken fingers and toes onstage”.
In the same interview, Meyers shared insight into how the band weaved digital elements into their latest full-length, Underneath.
“We mostly used electronics to manipulate what we wrote,” she said. “A lot of times we would lay out the structure of a song and then flip-flop parts and replace some organic things with electronics.
“I recorded lots of riffs and chopped them up on Ableton [recording platform software] to change it around. Then I basically had to learn how to play the new rhythm, which put another spin on it. I’m all in favor of using computers, but for the guitar parts, I like to feel like a person played it.”
She added: “We went into this with a specific goal of getting the analog world and the digital world to blend.”
