Review Summary: Pure and simply, an excellent blend of hardcore and metal.
Full of Hell, Pennsylvania/Maryland powerviolence outfit, who are no stranger to dark, fast, and punishing music, join forces with another Pennsylvania based band of the same scene, Code Orange Kids, who hasn't even come out with an LP yet in this stage of their career. Basically saying, they're the rookie kids. This EP was pretty much a make it or break it for the band, being pared up with one of the craziest bands in the scene. But enough backstory, let's get into the music.
Full of Hell kick the album off with the really intense Fox Womb. The song starts out pretty slow and sludgy, to a point where I thought this was a full on sludge metal album on first listen, but oh was I quite wrong. After a minute of the sludge, Full Of Hell juice us up with their typical insane way of playing powerviolence. The speed on here goes from 0 to 60 real quick with the band dishing out their typical d-beat drum playing style they use in their music. They use this style a lot but it never really seems to get old to me. Then also the guitars kick in, and man does the guitar playing kick ass here. The distortion is so fuzzy and downtuned, and that just adds to this eerie, dark mood that these guys create. During the last minute of the song, it starts to slow down again, and you finally are able to hear some of the craziest metal shrieks I've ever heard. They're so nasty, but in the good way of course. Dylan has got a great pair of lungs on him.
Once Fox Womb ends, another tornado get's unleashed, with the second track Damp Seeds in a River Dry. It seems as if the distortion and fuzziness has gone away here, and has been replaced with some reverb effect, which I personally don't care for too much for the faster parts, it makes good use later on in the song. So once again, about a minute in, tempo totally changed and it goes really slow and almost shoegaze-y in a sense, with the relentless vocals getting replaced with an eerie spoken word portion.
After Full of Hell finishes, the rookies are up to plate, and they absolutely outshine the first band in so many ways.
First off, Code Orange's songs aren't as punchy as the one's from Full Of Hell. They are heavy much so yes, but there's so much more to just that. They have more melodic parts. And by melodic, they have a whole portion of a song that decides to play slower, and have guitarist and vocalist, Reba Meyers, bring her clean singing to the table. Usually band's in the scene aren't dynamic enough to be able to use clean vocals in their music. But this band uses them perfectly. The slower, cleaner parts add so much to the atmosphere and the mood. They are one of the bands that can switch to really melodic parts to really heavy parts without sounding overly cheesy, which is something I give them major props for.
In their songs on this split, Code Orange doesn't really rely on fast hardcore songs for their heaviness. They rely on their originality and presence to make their songs abrasive and just hard to listen to at points. The slow part in V (MY BODY IS A WELL), where the band just chills, and the bass plays real slow, while Jami yells his head off. Not fast, not even really heavy. Just dark, and that's what I feel like they were going for on this one. They wanted to make an impression since they were working with a more well known band on this one, and what an impression they made.
All in all, this is just an amazing piece of heavy music, smeared with originality and experimentation from both bands, providing a good mix of dark and gloomy stuff, and fast and intense stuff. If you're looking into getting into either of these bands, look no further than here.
