"I am the ghost in the machine..."
(Pic by Angela Owens)
Code Orange have well and truly blown up.
The Pittsburgh industrial metal have unveiled Shatter, the theme song for WWE star Bray Wyatt following their previous involvement with Wyatt's last entrance song, Let Me In.
Their wild fourth album, 2020's Underneath, saw Code Orange blend their signature hardcore punk stylings with electronics, detours into groove metal and nu-metal.
Vocalist Jami Morgan spoke to Newsweek when they initially scored a Bray Wyatt theme song and recalled, "What happened was I saw that Bray had followed us on Twitter, and we’ve been following him since a couple of years ago when our record I Am King came out, and that’s around when he kicked off at the same time with his vignettes and vibe. And so I just messaged him and said, ‘Hey man, I think we should do something together, and it makes a lot of sense,’ and he hit me back."
Sonically, Shatter is a grandiose take on nu-metal, with flashes of Linkin Park's moodier tracks and flourishes of Deftones in there too. It's emotional and different from other WWE theme tunes, as it's pretty subdued. Check it out below.
"For everything about Code Orange on their new album is darker, deeper, heavier, even uglier than anything before it in theme and sound," Alex Sievers wrote about Underneath upon the album's release.
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"This is the quintet tearing off their flesh for the world to see what resides underneath; them looking in the mirror and having something else stare back from behind the murky glass; the band no longer hiding from themselves nor doing things in meandering half-measures. Gaze too long into an industrial-hardcore abyss, and the industrial-hardcore abyss also gazes into you.
Catching their performance at Download Festival in Melbourne a few years back, we wrote, "Now, Code Orange are an interesting band. Namely when drummer/vocalist Jami Morgan decries that they are the 'realest motherfuckers' around, and that their band is free from the capitalistic corporate machine.
"Even though they're on Roadrunner Records, apparently have a large team behind them, and apparently also got a cosy album advance that had more figures than my bank account will likely ever see. But all of that obnoxiousness and posturing BS completely falls to the way-side when they play their instruments and open their mouths to scream.
"Because holy shit, they really turned up the heat. This was one of the tightest and toughest sets of Download 2019! This band can talk the talk, but they can walk the walk too. Posers, Code sure aren't."