It’s a righteous noise that Roman quartet The Orange Man Theory whip up on this, their third album. Ten years of creating a shit-kicking stink has clearly honed them into a vicious prospect as they meld grind, hardcore and black metal to largely devastating effect.
Here guitars thrash, swing and stab like a spiky medieval flail wielded by a small battalion of pumped-up loons with oversized pituitary glands. Vital Drug is a cleverly arranged tumult of raging noise with instruments doing battle against each other until the entire thing collapses into a pool of its own blood-streaked effluence. And unlike some bands of their ilk, they occasionally stretch songs out to four minutes – practically epic in the hardcore genre – until it feels like punishment.
There are shades of big ugly Brit bruisers like Napalm Death, Iron Monkey and Raging Speedhorn, and definitely a Today Is The Today/ Eyehategod influence on display, but mainly The Orange Man Theory carve out their own grubby niche of sonic malevolence.
