“I swear I’m not the one you’re after,” croaks Code Orange lead singer Jami Morgan on ‘Never Fall Apart’, the eerie opener to the band’s new album, The Above.
The crackling of his voice emits a sense of hopelessness, pleading with this entity chasing him to leave him the hell alone. The band’s synth player Eric “Shade” Balderose crafts noisy soundscapes in the background of these tired assertions. It’s the musical version of a horror movie where some supernatural antagonist is ready to decimate its victim.
As the jump scare seems imminent, a beacon of hope blasts into the mix in the form of lush keys and the howling melodies of guitarist/vocalist Reba Meyers. This pulsating force pushes the villain back, buying the band some time to gather themselves and get into position. Before it can pounce again, Code Orange rockets out of its dungeon, fueled by a jetpack of Dominic Landolina’s bombarding guitar breakdowns and the meteor crashes of Max Portnoy’s drum patterns.
Speaking to Junkee, Jami describes this moment as “arguing with their captor”. “It’s almost like we wake up in a basement, and you can hear sounds at the beginning of the record. Even my dyed hair that you see right now represents the fact that we’re on the run, and trying to escape ourselves.”
Code Orange: The Allure of The Light
It’s hard to imagine why Code Orange would want to run from their past selves. Those former versions saw the band garner critical acclaim, with albums Forever and Underneath both earning Grammy nominations. But the enticing sense of ambition that comes with exploring the unknown unites the band in their journey to The Above. “When we look at the landscape of things, we feel like we’re stuck, and being left behind,” Jami says. “There’s this corrosive thing that follows me around that makes me compare myself to others, and leaves me wanting more. So it’s almost like I’m arguing my case to society, because being stuck here feels like a fucking prank.”
“There’s this corrosive thing that follows me around that makes me compare myself to others, and leaves me wanting more.”
Code Orange’s discography is filled with darkness. Their 2012 debut Love Is Love/Return to Dust (released as Code Orange Kids) places them in the dimly lit bandroom of a hardcore venue, stirring up moshpits with every piercing scream. This continued into 2014’s I Am King, as their chaotic gospel began to echo across metal’s underground scene. 2017’s Forever caught the attention of the underworld with its industrial-tinged brutality, prompting beasts to pull the band into the apocalyptic depths they call home. 2020’s Underneath finds them navigating this abyss, trudging through the sludge of glitchy metal flurries and expansive caverns of gloomy alternative rock choruses.
The Above is their first venture into a brighter setting, as they push towards a guiding light. Previous voyages limited them to nooks and crannies of murky labyrinths, but this album is an open world, and elements of grunge, gothic rock, and nu-metal serve as landmarks. Songs like ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ feel like vast wastelands, with the sun’s glaring beam burning through wheezing ecosystems. Others, like ‘Take Shape’, set the scene, with lyrics describing the “severed heads” and“rotting corpses” that block their path. The glow in the distance is their destination, but they have no idea what will happen when they get there.
“It’s like the light presents two doors: one that leads to acceptance from the world and glory, and the other that leads to an acceptance of self,” Jami tells me. “The album’s journey is like a parasitic bug in your brain, desperate to pull you back into the darkness. But we keep moving forward, and we’re unsure what the light will present to us, but we’re going to find out.”
Code Orange: The Mask In The Mirror
There are many parallels between the world of The Above and the reality we exist in. Every day, we balance our ambitions of following the light with the sway of the parasitic bug of complacency, pulling us back into a darkness of perceived comfort, and convincing us that there are too many risks in the vibrance we seek. Even while I’m writing this paragraph, the parasite’s voice plagues me. It’s begging me to go watch YouTube videos or waste my hours playing Valorant. It wants to shut my thoughts off, it wants impostor syndrome to come kick it with us, and it wants me to continue being captive in the prison of self-loathing procrastination.
All of our parasites differ, and we all have to fight them on a daily basis. Jami wields his ambition as a weapon in life’s battles, but he is weighed down by its hefty mass. He describes himself as “someone who wants to succeed, but only wants to succeed in a way that’s true to myself”. This duality serves as a hindrance in life’s typical duels, but it also led him to create The Above, where he faces this dichotomy head-on.
The song ‘The Mask of Sanity Slips’ represents his feelings of disconnection, and he says that “the mask is the outer layer that makes me feel isolated, and unable to break new ground”. Immediately following is ‘Mirror’, a moment of reflection led by Reba Meyers’ croons, which Jami describes as “the band looking back on the journey we’ve been on, and what we’ve both lost and gained in this process of climbing we’ve been on since we were teens”.
It’s the sharing of these experiences as a band that makes The Above such a special place to Code Orange. They traverse this new ground together, trying to reach the light. It results in the presence of every member being felt, from Shade’s grimy synth passages of ‘A Drone Opting Out Of The Hive’, to Reba’s yelping warbles on ‘But a Dream…’. Each member fights their inner parasite without hesitation, finding comfort in the support they provide each other as a unit. “They allow me to be the maestro, but this album would never be what it is without the whole band’s perspectives,” Jami tells me. “Life is very fluid, but one thing I do know is that we love each other, and together we put out something that goes into the past while pushing forward, we’re all proud of that.”
Code Orange: Beating The Game
The past is not a safe haven for Code Orange. Instead, they use it as a launching pad for their constant quest to move forward. Helping the off-kilter, alt-rock flourishes of The Above is The Smashing Pumpkins’ Lead singer Billy Corgan. He briefly graces ‘Take Shape’ with whiny affirmations, each word sounding like the wisdom of an elder wizard. Steve Albini is the album’s engineer, adding the garage grit of his past works with bands like The Jesus Lizard and Nirvana to Code Orange’s apocalyptic grunge. The Above never becomes a nostalgia trip, because every song acts like a trip-mine. As soon as you get used to the sonic terrain, it explodes with a stylistic switch-up.
“Life is very fluid, but one thing I do know is that we love each other, and together we put out something that goes into the past while pushing forward, we’re all proud of that.”
Alongside using rock music’s past as fuel, their personal history as a band acts like nitrous. Heaviness remains a backbone of the band as they explore The Above, as even the most peculiar examples of their musical curiosity still culminate in corrosive riffs or crushing breakdowns. There are even songs like ‘The Game’, which thrives in a straightforward gut-punch of hardcore, but also represents their drive to move forward at whatever cost. “It’s about feeling like you’re on a hamster wheel in this game where you’re constantly competing with others, and you have no choice but to put one foot in front of the other,” Jami says. “It’s this inner demon coming to light, reminding us that we chose to walk this path, so now we have to finish the job.”
Code Orange’s evolution has its naysayers. Across the internet, you’ll find many Reddit forums dismissing the stylistic changes of their recent output. Code Orange is in good company: bands like Bring Me The Horizon, Parkway Drive and many others have divided fans over the years for their experimentation. ‘Selling out’ is a common accusation among former fans, but in the end, BMTH’s Oli Sykes still screams, Parkway’s Winston McCall still roars, and Code Orange’s Jami still lets off crushing growls.
“The hardcore scene where we come from will continue to live and breathe without us.”
“The hardcore scene where we come from will continue to live and breathe without us,” Jami proclaims. “I think at one point we needed to freshen things up, but now we can explore a landscape outside of that bubble, bringing bands from that scene on the road with us, and continuing to have parts reminiscent of it in our music, because we truly do love that music.”
Code Orange: Illumination Along The Way
As The Above wraps up, questions remain. The album’s closer and title track concludes with the lyrics, “Acceptance is a far away place, but I’ll keep beating it in if I’m still breathing”. The soaring guitars around these vocals make it feel like the light is close, but we still don’t know where it leads. Jami also cannot give a definitive answer, because the answer is not linear. “As David Lynch says: abstraction gives room to dream.”
The journey Code Orange takes on The Above is a love letter to creativity. The path to the light is one rich with different influences and sights to see, leading them down unique stylistic avenues in their warped, metal world. Throughout they are fighting off parasites, which grasp onto their brains, trying to pull them back to the depths of the underneath. Between every battle, they reflect on their lives, from being young prospects in the hardcore scene to heavy music innovators that are creating external universes out of their internal strife.
In these trials and tribulations, they tumble towards the beaming beacon in the distance, finding pockets of illumination along the way. Some are blinding, making them lose their route. Some are beautiful, allowing them to revel in how far they’ve traveled. Both are meaningful, representing that life in any universe is a goddamn grind. In the words of Jami, it’s about finding the balance.
“Any good thing that happens is like a little rush, it’s this little flash that pops up, these little victories. I think what this journey is about is balancing those victories, with the decisions you make, how you treat others, and your ability to look at yourself in the mirror.”
Code Orange’s new album The Above is out now.
Henry Owens is a Melbourne-based writer dedicated to good bars and gargantuan breakdowns. You can find him trawling on Twitter and Instagram.
Image credit: Supplied