Code Orange – “Grooming My Replacement”

Photo by Tim Saccenti

Code Orange began the year by unleashing What Is Really Underneath?, a standout remixed and reworked version of their 2020 quarantine era highlight, Underneath, and news that they were the first band to join Blue Grape Music, the newly launched label formed by two former Roadrunner Records execs whom they’d previously been on the roster with. It was an early signifier that in their next era, any predictable expectations would be even further dismantled. The Pittsburg experimental hardcore band’s name recognition has steadily been on the ascent regardless, be it across many of this year’s prominent heavy music fests or putting it out there in the universe for more ears to hear beyond stages, yet “Grooming My Replacement”, one of two new singles from them, suggests that the mainstream market will need play by their rules on their way up. Meanwhile, listeners who’ve been with them earlier will appreciate a more explicit return in a frenzy of metal shards, cyborg riffs tearing limbs through a sludgy pit, and an all-consuming intensity, if maybe the only easily digestible parts being Jami Morgan’s vocals touting an anthemic adjacency with that of Incendiary’s Brendan Garrone or Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha. “I’m already in your mind / Your brain’s a vehicle for my failures / So give me the fucking light,” he unleashes, pulling naysayers six feet under and Code Orange towering over from above.

Visualizer by: NOWHERE2RUN & Autumn Morgan

Code Orange’s “Grooming My Replacement” single is available now on Blue Grape Music.