Code Orange

CODE ORANGE ARE ONE OF THOSE BANDS THAT SEEM TO HIT THEIR PEAK WITH EACH NEW RELEASE, ONLY TO ONE-UP THEMSELVES YET AGAIN WITH THE NEXT ONE. HOW THEY’LL FOLLOW UP THE SPINE-SHATTERINGLY MENTAL UNDERNEATH IS FAR BEYOND US, BUT ACCORDING TO GUITARIST REBA MEYERS, THEY’VE ALREADY GOT THEIR SIGHTS SET ON THE NEXT GAME-CHANGING MASTERPIECE. FOR THE MINUTE, THOUGH, LET’S JUST FAWN OVER THIS NEW BEAST OF AN LP.

When we last caught up with Code Orange, they were already one of the biggest hardcore bands in modern history. It was right before they took to Australian stages for the 2019 Download Festival (remember live music?), and the murmurs of their fourth studio album were heating up faster than a match thrown into a barrel of diesel. 2017’s Forever had showcased such passion, ferocity and talent that it seemed as though if Code Orange were to usurp it, they’d need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, they swallowed the rabbit whole.

Especially notable in a climate where originality is as scarce as it is, Underneath landed at the turn of 2020 with a pummelling plentitude of new ideas. It’s vicious, grimy, rugged and industrial, yet it’s also their brightest and most dynamic body of work yet. It’s packed with glitches and jumpscares and production techniques that even the most creatively intoned of us never saw coming. It defies what their biggest supporters thought Code Orange were capable of, and makes one thing abundantly clear: this is not a band whose success is driven by hype, heresy or some cultural phase; they’re the kings and queen of metal’s next generation, and they’re here to stay. Don’t like it? Die mad about it.

As guitarist Reba Meyers fills us in, Underneath was a long time coming for the Pennsylvania fivesome.

Any moment they weren’t either eating, sleeping or sweating their brains out through their eye sockets onstage, Code Orange were thinking about this album. If it was to take them 20 years to make, then they’d have spent 20 years making it. The effort they put into the album is truly insane, and Meyers is over the moon that she now gets to spill her guts about it.

I feel like Underneath is easily your most intense and over-the-top album yet – was the goal to just kick things over the edge and dial it all up to 11?

That’s always our goal, man. We’re not the type of band who just wants to churn material out – we have a very clear goal of improvement and evolution, we talk about things as a group at length, and we push each other super hard. We’re so critical of the music and the ideas we all come up with, and that’s part of why we’re so intense – it definitely reflects in the music.

We went into writing this album – which was a really long process, too – with a very serious attitude. We didn’t want anything to be compromised, and we had so many things that we were imagining, but we wanted everything to come out sounding how we had it in our heads. And we didn’t want to compromise that vision for any reason, no matter how much work it took. I hope people are able to connect with that.

At some points on the record, like “Sulfur Surrounding”, you tap into this type of groove and melody in a really powerful and dynamic way, and how that angles up against the heavier stuff makes it stand out really nicely. Were you excited to experiment with a lot of new sounds and flavours on this record?

Definitely. At this point in our lives, I think we’ve all kind of soaked in our influences and gotten our crafts to how they’re going to be – it’s like we’re trying to add more paint to the picture that we’ve been working on for as long of a time as our band has been a thing, y’know?

We wanted each character and each emotion to come through in a very individual way for each song, but then it also had to flow as one big piece. And that is a very hard goal to accomplish – especially with how detail-oriented and specific we get as a group, and how many standards we all hold. We each have our own different set of standards, so it took a lot of communication with each other, a lot of explaining how we wanted things to be, and just sitting in a room and working on the music for hours at a time. We weren’t going to settle.

But I think we eventually got to a point where, yeah, we all felt like it was ready, and we did the best job with it that we could, and that’s why this album

feels so intense – the amount of intensity and all the blood, sweat and tears that each one of us put into it was so immense.

With how much time you spent working on this album as a band – I was reading that Jami [Morgan, vocals/drums] said you guys spent almost a whole year just locking down all the digital information – did you find that there was more of a collaborative dynamic between you all?

We always have collaborated – that’s always been the Code Orange way of writing – and I think we’ve now just fallen into each other’s specialties and honed in on our skills a lot better as a unit. Each person has their way of writing and their own way of thinking about the music, but since we’ve been doing this together for so long, we’ve learned how to fill each other’s gaps. We’ve kind of accepted what we’re best at and what we’re not so good at, and we’re able to be very honest about that with each other.

Sometimes you get pissed off by [criticism], but we’re always able to work through it and push each other up to the next level, and I think that’s something that separates our band from a lot of other bands and artists. We have so many people filling a specific role in the writing of the music, but it doesn’t just sound like one big mess – we’re able to collaborate in a way that makes us work as a unit, and all those different ideas can mesh with each other. And that is the band’s identity.

That’s what makes the album so diverse – we’re able to have these super digital riffs mixed with these really in-the-room, heavy, old-school Code Orange riffs, mixed with ethereal and melodic chords, mixed with modern, almost videogame-esque digital sounds. It’s a whole melting pot of different influences and characteristics, but since we’ve all grown up together, we’ve been able to develop this thread that links everything together, and helps it all still make sense in the bigger picture.

So the last time we spoke, you mentioned that something you were thinking about a lot was the potential of designing your own signature guitar – which, of course, finally happened last year with the ESP RM600. How’s that been holding up for you lately?

It’s been great! I just used it at our livestreamed record release show, and it held up awesomely. It sounds amazing, and I’m just extremely proud of it. Y’know, I’d been wanting to do something like this since I was a kid, so the fact that I got to do it and I got to make something that I don’t look back on with any regret at all is great.

And ESP were super cool about it the whole time that we were working together – they let me think of the whole idea and were able to make it happen. And y’know, it’s tough in this industry – especially nowadays, lot of times you’ll think of these crazy ideas and specific aesthetic concepts that people will just immediately give you a ‘no’ to. But they didn’t say no to me at all, and they went out of their way to make it happen exactly as I had imagined it.

Were you very handson with ESP in the actual making of the guitar?

Yeah. I had been playing the Viper for so long that I knew I just wanted it to be similar to a specific model of that guitar, and they were willing to do that. I mocked up a picture of the reverse headstock on the Viper with the finish, the colouring and the logo I wanted, and I had no idea how they were going to be able to make it happen, but I sent it to them and they figured it out in a very whole new way that hadn’t been done before. I’m crazy proud of it!

One of the big drawcards for it – on top of that insane black marble satin finish, of course – is the EMG 81 pickup and TKO killswitch. What is it that made you want to have them on this guitar, and how have you been making the most of them?

We kind of went back and forth on the pickups and how we wanted to do that, and they pushed me to just stick with the one. That’s all I ever use, anyways, and I think we wanted to go with more of a modern design. EMG were willing to make that pickup to match with the logo, which was super cool of them – it’s a custom one-off colour just for this guitar, too.

And I love the killswitch for the live show, especially with all these glitchy moments that we have – it makes it really easy to bring those parts to life onstage without any software. And y’know, we just went back and forth until it was right, basically. We both had great ideas to share with each other, and that’s why I think it turned out the way it did. That’s how I feel about everything, really – music and art and anything creative – if you’re able to go back and forth with a company or a person, and really collaborate with them, then whatever you’re working on can end up being a greater thing.