Words: Kate Allvey.  Images: Penny Bennett and Download Festival

Code Orange

“Wake the fuck up,” screams Code Orange vocalist Jami Morgan and there’s no way we could stay asleep with their opening volley of maximum volume metalcore. Morgan’s bleeding by the end of first song ‘Grooming My Replacement’, their moodiness Korn-ish without being corny, their harshness the brutal shaking we need to start the third day of Download. In fact, they try to play on after the end time of their shortened set and that level of dedication to providing music to make our teeth rattle needs to be applauded.

 Creeper

Combine AFI, Misfits, the Damned and the cast of Phantom of the Opera, and what do you get? Southampton’s own Creeper, adding a dash of drama to the main stage. ‘Cry To Heaven’ drags power chords and maximum gothic intonation from vocalist Will Gould into the daylight, explaining why there’s such a big turnout for a band so early on the bill. The duelling drums between Gould and second vocalist Hannah Greenwood, the retro anti-cuteness of ‘Down Below’ or the fact they are so damn stylish as a band could also be the big factors in drawing the masses to the bottom of the hill, but with a surprise appearance from Dan Jacobs of Atreyu on ‘Lovers Led Astray’, our early rising is richly rewarded. 

Kerry King

The legendary guitarist is intent on forging his own path away from Slayer, and his set at Download is the first time his solo supergroup (featured members past and present of Machine Head, Death Angel and Testament) have visited the UK. It’s a set that’s understandably heavy on songs from his recent solo debut, ‘From Hell I Rise’, which if we dare say it, sounds very close to everything else King has worked on in his career, the extent that ‘Raining Blood’ and ‘Black Magic’ are indistinguishable from the solo tracks. The classic metal sound is a quintessential part of Download and there’s a transparent reason why King at the top of the heavy metal pantheon, and his set is very much playing to the guitar worshippers in the crowd. ‘Toxic’, “about the fucked up state of politics and politicians across the world” according to vocalist Mark Osegueda, feels a bit clumsy considering the nuanced political statements shared by many other acts, but the old school aggression is a welcome oasis in the Download experience.

Parkway Drive

“Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone,” warned Friday headliners Queens of the Stone Age on ‘The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret’, and the rumour mill had been running overtime about who might fill the empty slot on Sunday. Slipknot and My Chemical Romance were mentioned, as were heretical swedes Ghost, but the alert finally confirmed an hour before their set that Australian metalcore superstars Parkway Drive would be the surprise addition. Naturally, the crowd stretched twenty metres in every direction outside the tiny Dogtooth Stage, with nervous security unsure of the severity of the upcoming band posted on every corner. They needn’t have worried though. Parkway Drive create the kind of uplifting atmosphere that every festival needs, a shared community of folk ready to dance through ‘Glitch’s unearthly guitar as the ground squelches beneath our feet. They drag out the bridge of ‘Prey’ for heightened pleasure before ‘Idols and Anchors’ satisfying payoff and slow-motion slamming. We embrace for ‘Wild Eyes’, the passion poured into the drums diffusing out into the clearing sky. 

Of Mice and Men

Heavy, bouncing and compelling, Of Mice and Men capture the interest of those for whom the stage-clashing Sum 41 are anathema. ‘Obsolete’s grow up emo translates into all seeing darkness that hypnotises onlookers rather than provoking a visceral reaction, until singalong song ‘Castaway’ adds a little cyber energy for our approval and we’re suddenly dancing like our lives depend on it. ‘Would You Still Be There’ feels like it belongs in the future, an era yet to be discovered that grabs a full tent who sing as they run in, and ‘O.G. Loko’ is a big fan favourite, even with toddlers dressed as unicorns who perch on their parents’ shoulders and mash their hands to the roof of the tent in time to the music. 

Thy Art Is Murder

Thy Art Is Murder kick off to a slow and dirty start with ‘Slaves Beyond Death’ keeping the contrast high between the stages, guttural screaming from Tyler Miller as the only appropriate accompaniment to the drum onslaught from Jesse Beahler. In each circle of friends in the crowd, one person loves Thy Art Is Murder and slams like it’s their calling in life while the rest look on politely. At the front, the core acknowledged as “muddy and disgusting” by Miller (a fair statement) will place this as their top set of the weekend, feeling every second of the beautiful juxtaposition between the barrage of noise highlighted with sirens and the late afternoon sunshine. ‘Blood Throne’ is just the perfect example of the kind of wholesome brutality that characterises this corner of the spectrum of bands at Download. 

Corey Taylor

The Slipknot frontman has shed his mask both literally and metaphorically to present a set that’s equal parts raw, sophisticated and silly. ‘Post Traumatic Blues’ comes across as very classic rock until he opens his mouth and let’s out the the full hardcore roar he’s known for, minimising the melodic parts of his range. A show like this, with roughly half the crowd in Slipknot shirts, is like shooting fish in a barrel for him but he puts his all into the solos, determined to live up to his own legend. “There’s no way I was missing this show,” he says sincerely, referring to his health issues which prevented him from touring earlier this year, and with a clean, gleaming smile, he takes over on rhythm guitar for ‘Black Eyes Blue’. Much of his set tackles serious topics with gravity and charisma, until he breaks into the SpongeBob Squarepants theme, winning over those hesitant about his solo prowess with his humour. 

Limp Bizkit

It’s impossible to separate Limp Bizkit’s performance from the inexplicable cult status, and they were, without a doubt, the band with both the biggest crowd and the most enthusiastic response of the weekend. However, the choice to alternate each song with a recording of a pop song, which frontman Fred Durst sways awkwardly through, was an odd one, as was bookending their set by playing ‘Break Stuff’ twice. “We’re just kinda warming the place up for Avenged Sevenfold, keeping it mellow for you guys,” he explains in one of the excruciatingly long pauses between songs. But when they decide to focus, Limp Bizkit still have the magic that sent them to the top of the charts. The reaction to ‘Rollin (Air Raid Vehicle)’ and ‘Take A Look Around’ is genuinely vibrant, creating the atmosphere that you’ve seen on countless YouTube videos and desperately hope to experience for yourself. Yes, there’s a distinct irony in a fifty-three year old with a Santa beard singing about how people don’t understand ‘My Generation’, but the sheer joy that most take from hearing their karaoke staples played across the main stage is infectious. They know how to manipulate, how to masterfully create a buildup, and when they use their maximum energy, it’s easy to see how they’ve won over so many fans who weren’t there the first time around. Thousands simply go home after Limp Bizkit’s set, their Download weekend concluded with a satisfying high. 

Avenged Sevenfold

As the sun sets on another Download Festival, we enter the rich and mysterious world of Avenged Sevenfold. There’s so many sides to their set, from complex narratives, sweet moments and even some plan old rock songs, and they emerge from technical issues as a triumphant headliner. Early song ’Afterlife’ stimulates our remaining brain cells like a sledgehammer with choruses that reach to the darkening sky as ghostly visuals fade to dust in our final twiddly guitar fix of the weekend. “Today is a special day, it’s Father’s Day. There is nothing cooler in this world than being a good dad,” declared vocalist M.Shadows before ‘Hail To The King’, and our weary fists punch upwards in a show of survival as we wail the chorus back. They dedicate ‘Fiction’ to former member The Rev, who passed away in 2009, their baroque piano sincerity prevailing in a tender and honest moment without pretension.

Of course, their most straightforward songs smack the hardest. ‘Bat Country’ is a huge hitter, provoking manic dancing between the drying puddles, and ‘Nightmare’ wins the fight against sound system issues to emerge as the memorable anthem of the last day. ‘A Little Piece Of Heaven’ shakes us through a nightmare with thunderous glee and the level of spectacle you’d expect from a headliner, with monstrous skeletons serenading on the saxophone projected behind. The misty and mystical penultimate ‘Save Me’ drifts into ‘Cosmic’ as an emotional finale, bidding farewell to the weekend in a way that feels fundamentally right and giving us the closure we crave to before rejoining the real world. 

Click the below image for the full ‘Download Festival – Sunday’ gallery

Their 2017 breakthrough record ‘Forever’ thrilled listeners, a grotty hellscape of chaotic hardcore blended with industrial rock music, creating an album that sounded like the soundtrack to a waking nightmare.

The album spawned countless imitators, and with good reason. Code Orange weren’t the first heavy band to add dark electronics to their sound (after all, Refused did it in the 90s), but they were the first to make the electronics and traditional rock instruments meld together cohesively to make something that sounded so truly and comprehensively evil.

The follow-up record, 2020’s ‘Underneath’ went along more melodic lines without sacrificing any of their trademark brutality. ‘The Above’ feels like a continuation on that trajectory, infusing even more melody into their sound to devastatingly brilliant effect.

‘The Above’ has plenty of moments of crushing heaviness as you’d expect, but these are cut through with soaring choruses and moments of tender brilliance. The record feels like a love letter to some of the greatest rock music to be released in the 1990s and 2000s, with nods to industrial rock, grunge, and nu metal, without sacrificing any of the band’s signature sound.

That much is obvious from the album’s very first track. ‘Never Far Apart’ begins with the sound of scraping knives, in a way that is reminiscent of the opening of the seminal Nine Inch Nails record ‘The Downward Spiral’. The song proper opens with soft industrial sounds as vocalist Jami Morgan whispers menacingly over the top. It keeps threatening to explode into a wall of sound but doesn’t – switching into a piano-driven section with vocalist Reba Myers crooning over the top. When the song finally explodes into life it is crushing as digitally altered vocals spit “do it, do it, do it,” over and over again.

‘Take Shape’ is a pulsating industrial rock track that switches between subtle electronics and explosive guitars, with a towering chorus. On the basis of the songwriting alone, this could’ve easily been released in 1998, but Code Orange add their own inimitable style to it, peppering plenty of unnerving sound effects throughout. During the bridge for example there is percussion that sounds like a steel door being repeatedly slammed shut. Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins also makes an appearance, and his trademark nasal tones are a perfect fit for the 90s feel of the track.

Code Orange has always been incredible at writing crushingly brutal music, but their ability to write a more tender number has come on leaps and bounds on ‘The Above’. The best example of this is ‘Mirror’, which is almost certainly the best melodic song they’ve ever written.

By contrast, ‘A Drone Opting Out of the Hive’ is classic Code Orange, featuring chugging riffing, growled, barely intelligible vocals, and unsettling glitchy electronics. It also features an incredible mosh call, not a scream, but a whisper; “tick tick tick… boom”.

There are plenty of moments here that lean closer to straight-up rock than Code Orange’s music ever has before. ‘Splinter the Soul’ has one of the best hooks on an album that is full of them, while ‘Snapshot’ is a surprisingly upbeat rock song with an earworm of a chorus. Meanwhile, ‘Circle Through’ sounds like a 90s grunge rager. With the latter, it’s tempting to wonder if Billy Corgan’s grunge sensibilities rubbed off on them a bit when he came into the studio to record his vocals for ‘Take Shape’

‘The Game’ and ‘Grooming My Replacement’ will be catnip to longtime fans, as they’re the most similar to the band’s previous material – nasty, heavy, uncomfortable, and completely gripping. They were also the two lead singles, and you have to applaud a cheeky piece of misdirection; after hearing these two songs on their own, you’d have been forgiven for expecting the heaviest Code Orange record yet, but instead, the opposite is true. ‘Grooming My Replacement’ is a particular highlight; it sounds like ‘Iowa’ era Slipknot, while also sounding quintessentially Code Orange, which we mean in the very best way possible. Title track ‘The Above’ closes the record out in gloriously ominous fashion, a quiet, creepy track that explodes into life as Morgan yells “into the above.”

‘The Above’ is a masterstroke, comfortably one of the best records of 2023, and one that will excite old and new fans alike. It’s tempting to think that in 10 years’ time, we’ll look back on the current era in metal and see Code Orange as one of its defining bands. They are true innovators, blurring the lines between metal, hardcore, electronic, and industrial in a way that nobody else has before. This is the Pittsburgh sextet’s most accessible work yet, and if there’s any justice in the world, it will put them on the road to becoming one of the biggest rock acts on the planet.

ASH BEBBINGTON

One thing that was always going to raise concern was how much the album would rely on the new industrial direction Code Orange have recently found themselves drawn to. After the suitably terrifying introductory track of ‘(deeperthanbefore)’ and the second single ‘Swallowing The Rabbit Hole’, which has nice touches of Code Orange’s older work in ‘I Am King’, comes the first big test of the album with ‘In Fear’. There’s a definite upgrade to how these new elements play with the rest of their sound compared to early experiments (older tracks like ‘The Hunt’ were solid showings, but felt like the industrial side was built on top of their metal architecture, rather than woven into it), and the band set themselves up well with a demonstration of the rip-roaring results of this new fusion, featuring screaming samples that would make Aphex Twin cower. Right away, however, this track sets a rule for the rest of the LP: the industrial elements are to be a sidearm, not the primary weapon. This was the album’s big hurdle – convincing fans that the band could continue to deliver a genuine Code Orange sound without these electronically driven elements overshadowing their own natural talent – and they clear it wonderfully. 

This continues on later with ‘The Easy Way’, an auditory nod to 2018’s ‘Only One Way’ single, and the most industrial of the bunch. Even then, though, it’s kept in check by the masterful vocal displays by Eric Balderose. Eric’s screaming is second to none on this album, guttural and sinister in one moment in tracks like ‘Cold-Metal Place’, before letting loose to throat-destroying levels in ‘Erasure Scan’. This is backed up by some fantastic strings by Joe Goldmanon on bass and Dominic Landolina, who shares guitar duties with Reba Meyers. ‘Sulfur Surrounding’ is perhaps the best guitar showing on the record, with ‘A Perfect Circle’-style acoustic backing before breaking into stinging riffs that are utterly impossible to resist banging your head to.

Balderose, like in previous outings, splits vocal duties with Meyers, who handles the more melodic side of the LP with equal mastery. It’s incredibly enjoyable when the chaos of a heavy Balderose-lead track like ‘You And You Alone’, with its chugging drumline courtesy of drummer Jami Morgan, is cut down suddenly to be replaced by the more focused rage of Reba in ‘Who I Am’, an ethereal, slow (for Code Orange) jam that has this hard-to-pinpoint element of nostalgia to it in the verses, like a half remembered song from your teenage years. Or when ‘Autumn and Carbine’ – a track with hints of ‘Forever’ in its structure and a guitar line like an avalanche – suddenly explodes into ‘Back Into The Glass’, arguably the most hardcore-aligned track on the album that still retains those heavy metal elements that separate Code Orange from the pack. These songs are all solid showings on their own, but it’s how they flow and jump into each other that gives ‘Underneath’ such a human and conversational pace to it; some parts flow slowly and calmly (well, as calm as Code Orange can be), before others interrupt to switch gears, suddenly changing the rhythm up sharply but not unnaturally.

These vocals reach their apex when fused into each other, such as in the titular final track, which features both Balderose and Meyers in what can only be described as verbal sparring. If you were to continue the horror movie comparisons, it’s the final scene of the movie, the sole survivor facing off against the killer as the house burns around them. It’s not the best track of the album, but its positioning as the last one is perfect, and neatly ties into the theme of duality prevalent throughout ‘Underneath’, a record the band described in Kerrang! as being about “having to face ourselves as a society in this super overcrowded, overexposed, totally all-consuming digital-based world that we live in”.

Code Orange will be divisive, as they always are. If you believe they don’t belong in the hardcore scene, if you never gelled with their style in the first place, or if you simply crave the return of their other outing, Adventures, chances are this won’t do much to sway you to their side. ‘Underneath’ isn’t interested in compromise or appeasement, instead it’s a self-celebration, a tribute to the inarguably unique sound the band has developed over the last decade. As posturing and self-idolising as that sounds, at 14 tracks that absolutely fly by, it works a treat. The Pittsburgh punk outfit are happy to be as they are, and happy to put out an album that serves not to argue their case or convince you of the sonic superiority, but to simply be a heavy (and fun) as hell album that’s perfected what’s come before. In this regard, the Code Orange Kids aren’t alright, they’re thriving.

FIACHRA JOHNSTON

After being nominated for “Best Metal Performance” at the 60th annual Grammy awards, and their 2017 release ‘Forever’ being the sole metal release to make Rolling Stone’s “50 best albums of 2017” list, their new track builds and descends, firing listeners through a three-part soundscape.

Code Orange will be embarking on a UK Tour starting in April.

This comes ahead of the announcement for the deluxe reissue of their 2016 debut album ‘Animus’, which will contain a bonus disc of five songs recorded live during their summer tour last year. It will be released on the 23rd February via Prosthetic Records.

The band will also be playing the following UK shows this April with Trivium, Code Orange and Power Trip.

APRIL
16 BRISTOL O2 Academy
17 BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy
19 GLASGOW O2 Academy
20 MANCHESTER Academy
21 LONDON O2 Brixton Academy

Earlier this year the band released their eighth album ‘The Sin and the Sentence’ via Roadrunner Records.

The latest release from Code Orange is their third album ‘Forever’ from earlier this year on Roadrunner, whilst Power Trip’s latest is their recent second album ‘Nightmare Logic’ on Southern Lord Records.

As for Venom Prison, last year they released their debut album ‘Animus’ on Prosthetic Records.

APRIL 2018
16 BRISTOL O2 Academy
17 BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy
19 GLASGOW O2 Academy
20 MANCHESTER Academy
21 LONDON O2 Brixton Academy

The songs ‘Adeline’ and ‘Hit Me Like That Snare’ were reworked by Code Orange guitarist and synth player Eric “Shade” Balderose.

Earlier this year the band released their third album ‘Forever’ via Roadrunner Records.