Review Summary: I guess you could say it's like if Robot Chicken was a screamo band. Or it's the follow up to one of screamo's pioneering albums.
As influential and exceptional as it may have been, Chaos Is Me wasn’t unbelievably brilliant, nor did it necessarily contain the best music of its genre at the time. It did put one in the perfect mood to punch the crap out of anything and everything though, and that remains one of if not the most important and desirable aspect of screamo today. But the album left plenty of room for additional qualities. Included in a follow up could have been less emphasis on the brief, chaotic style they had helped revolutionize and some calmer, traditional emo aspects thrown in for rampant mood and tempo swings, as well as overall variety. I wouldn’t want to suggest they completely ditch their style though, that would be blasphemous.
And they didn’t. Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow! is everything its predecessor was, except they accented short, schizophrenic screamfests even more so than before. The first eight tracks don’t even complete ten minutes of music, and seem to go by even faster than that suggests. Everything is frantically executed with immeasurable passion and anger, from the screams and the guitars and drums to even the incoherent lyrics, which yes do matter to prove Orchid aren’t some group of superficial wannabe hardcore kids. Heck,
Lights Out is as unadulterated lyrically as love songs get, neatly packaged beneath sadistic screaming and instruments, and finished off with some tastefully shoddy production. It almost resembles a primitive Jane Doe, except Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow! isn’t as outstanding.
Its few standout moments are scattered amongst primarily great ones, but it doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself from Chaos Is Me. If anything, it doesn’t do as much as their debut, with a shorter runtime and a miniscule drop in musical quality. A majority of the album is engrossed by a similar guitar tune as well, all but eliminating variation in that aspect. Digressing from the bad, Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow!, similar to Chaos Is Me, has a superb finale, eliminating any thought of Orchid being a one trick pony.
…And The Cat Turned To Smoke completes the album, dropping down the tempo in favor of an equally intense but ultimately more impacting finish. The music sinks in a bit more when you actually have time to think about it before the next song is assaulting your ears. Not to mention how awesome the song is aside from the fact.
Orchid are pretty intense, and this is extreme, classy screamo. They don’t mess around with singing or an overabundance of melody, and it’s all for the better. A departure from their first full-length might have been nice, but throwing out an album in the same vein without any apparent loss musically and emotionally serves as an adequate follow up. This isn’t going to hook you onto the genre, and Chaos is Me probably won’t either. It takes a surprisingly long time to digest for its length, but once you do stomach it, it’s hard to get bored with a fourteen-minute album. So dance, dance. Dance to some legit screamo.
3.5/5
