REVIEW: Orthodox - A Door Left Open

In the city of Nashville, Tennessee, there is a band. Their name is Orthodox. Their music is absolutely anything but. On this fourth album in their time as a band, they’ve managed to increase the intensity, the aggression, and the songwriting ability across the board. A Door Left Open is as close to a horror movie atmosphere as hardcore gets, with an unsettling atmosphere that leaves everything feeling a little bit off pervading the entire record. As is expected by the group, it addresses various topics and themes of religious and anti-religious schools of thought, as well as a reoccurring nightmare signer Adam Easterling dealt with on tour, and the idea that sadly, life is out to get you.

Much as is to be expected, the album rips out of the gate in a foaming, frothing, frenetic frenzy of furious guitars and seething vocals. ‘Can You Save Me?’ kicks the door down, making no pretences that this band is here for anything other than ruination. Fans of the band may be well aware already of the infamy their live shows hold, even within the hardcore scene, and the live experience has been kept in mind here on these furious pieces of music. The track opens in much the same way you’d expect their live show to, and then rolls straight into breakdown tempos to whip things into a riot in seconds.’Body Chalk’ comes next, and at barely a minute long it’s not a grower, so it makes up for that by just blowing the doors off the recording studio.

Track three ‘Dread Weight’ has all the heft suggested by the track title. The breakdown at the end notwithstanding, it’s a bruising song with gnarly riffs throughout - and then the breakdown is a straight up facemelter. Fourth track ‘Blend in with the Weak’ includes the voice of Matt McDougal, of the well known metalcore act Boundaries, and his abrasive gutturals bring a welcome level of bonejarring mania to proceedings. However, even these two excellent tracks don’t quite compare to the behemoth in fifth, ‘Godless Grace’. The riffs are powered by some unholy energy, the vocals and lyrics are brutal as anything, and the drumming is artilleristic. The last minute or so will likely bring the listener out in uncontrollable gurns.

Tracks six and seven, ‘Keep Your Blessings’ and ‘Scared Place’ respectively, are both the type of nasty that will get the spin kickers excited, and the crowdkillers smiling in that very unnervingly gleeful way they do just before everything erupts. Both are full to the brim of that exact unnerving energy that the record was intended to have, and both are built for the chaos of an Orthodox live show. ‘Step Inside’ takes the tempo down a tad but not the ruthlessness, nor the visceral rage, so is merely a slower pace for people to mosh to.

‘One Less Body’ is notable here for two reasons. It’s the only song on the record with any clean vocals, and those vocals are performed by the legendary Brann Dailor of Mastodon. The track opens with a massive yell of “What the fuck” to get it going, the riffs are groovy, it’s all going smoothly for the band at this point. Lead single ‘Searching For A Pulse’ is about the aforementioned nightmare - “This is about a reoccurring dream I would get every time we left for tour that my house was burning down and I couldn’t make it home in time to save it," explains vocalist Adam Easterling, revealing it would crumble to ash as he finally made it back. "I tried to write something that encapsulates an overall fear and eventual submission to being powerless." The track perfectly captures the emotional devastation, whilst still keeping the energy and aggression where it’s expected to be.

On the last stretch of the album, Comeback Kid’s own Andrew Neufeld joins Orthodox for ‘Commit to Consequence’, the penultimate track of the LP. The song is full of more swing than a jazz band, and yet still the belligerence of the band manages to overcome any sense of fun to keep things as rabid as possible. The final song here is ‘Will You Hate Me?’, capping each end of the record with a question. This is the longest piece on the album, and it takes its time, allowing the song to expand and flow out into the only song that isn’t blind anger, allowing for a moment of reflection on the last half hour of devastation, even as such lyrics as “Death offers no relief, only certainty” wash over you, before the final crushing blow hits and silences the LP.

Orthodox don’t know how to make a bad song, and that much is blatantly obvious here. The group have released one of this year’s very best hardcore albums in A Door Left Open, and have more and more doors opening up in front of them as we speak.

Score: 9/10

A Door Left Open was released on June 6th via Century Media Records.

Words: Jake Longhurst

Photos: Orthodox