Review Summary: With Code Orange Kid's debut the band breathes a breath of fresh air into a genre that has needed a new young band to lead the way for a new wave of hardcore/metal bands to come.
The debut album can always be a real tricky thing for any band and there are two possible outcomes of the release;The debut is a landmark record and overshadows all the other releases the band produces in the future or its a flop.With Code Orange Kid's first full length it's a case of the first outcome but also shows a very young band seeking and coming very close to finding their own sound in a hard genre of extreme music to find your own voice as a band because so many bands of this genre stick to what works, straightforward, in your face, hard hitting hardcore mix of metal.Lucky that's not so much the case with Code Orange Kid's debut where the band finds a middle ground showing that not only can they kick you in the face but can also create a breathy atmosphere with a handful of tracks on this LP slowing things down and letting the listener know that they're not a one trick pony.
The album kicks off tremendously with the opener "Flowermouth (The Leech)" where it explodes with all the instruments working seamlessly together with guitarist/singer Reba Meyer's throat wrenching vocals and a great breakdown-ish part and then switches to drummer Jami Morgan's vocals which sounds great in the mix.The next few songs continue the cycle of being very in your face but do change things up quite a bit with "Around My Neck//On my head" being even faster and more aggressive then it's predecessor.The track "Sleep (I've Been Slipping Lately)", although still being very heavy, the band brings out their sludgy metal side of their sound slowing things down and trudge along with the song being very bass heavy and the drums sounding great as they syncopate and pound.This sludgy sound turns up quite often on this album and where it all comes together at its best is on the closing track "Bloom (Return to Dust)" where it starts out almost droney with the guitar and then it explodes with bass,drums and vocals and slowly builds until the track crashes to an end.
Although a majority of this record is heavy and abrasive their is also a sense of reprieve with a few of the tracks on here letting you up for air after the band has been holding your head under water.A good a example of this is on the track "Liars//Trudges" where the song starts off very fast but slowly slows down until it is just guitar and vocals gently, but somewhat uncomfortably (in a good way), going along.The song "Colors (Into Nothing) is really where the less abrasive side of this band shines with the song starting off very airy and as it goes on the other instruments come in subtly and creates an atmosphere that's very pretty.
Overall this is a great record hands down with Code Orange Kids streamlining their sound and finding a middle ground between the abrasive and the atmospheric.It's very surprising how a bunch of eighteen-to-nineteen year old kids can come up with a record that sounds like a band that has been playing for well over a decade.While not everything on this album is perfect it comes very close to sounding like band who have found their sound in a short amount of time and are on the verge of making something very stellar in the foreseeable future.
