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Song Premiere: Code Orange Kids, 'Liars // Trudge'

Code Orange Kids.
Courtesy of the artist
Code Orange Kids.

Following a series of tapes and 7-inch singles, Love Is Love // Return to Dust is the first full-length by Code Orange Kids, and it's an untamed, unpredictable beast of a hardcore record. With its members just out of high school, perhaps the hardcore/doom/noise/post-rock shuffle-play chaos of the young Pittsburgh band is a sign of where we're at in heavy music — fewer boundaries, more ways to crush eardrums. But it's one thing to acknowledge your influences and another to destroy them altogether. That's where "Liars // Trudge" comes in.

The first 10 seconds are a dead Converge giveaway — buzzing and grinding skulls into the floor, and with Converge's Kurt Ballou at the production helm, no less. But just as the staccato noise hits its peak and you expect another lunge into the scrambling pit, Code Orange Kids' members scale back to a distorted bass and snare, with the drummer screaming the serenity prayer at a zombie-walk pace, before closing: "But this pain has a face. Vilified. Unstricken." A sublime swell of menacing feedback then mounts with, well, trudging anticipation as "Liars // Trudge" tugs at the slow-motion tempo like a storm at sea, three of the four members screaming with a mania that would seem to necessitate an exorcist.

Love Is Love // Return to Dust comes out November 20 on Deathwish Inc.

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