My friend Henry, who plays guitar for the band Voyage In Coma, wrote a short piece about the Pittsburgh based punk band Code Orange Kids. If you haven’t listened to this band yet – you are missing out. They are currently on a full US tour with our best friends in Xerxes. Go see them!
Here’s Henry:
Tags: Baltimore, ccas, punkIf you’re playing the kind of punk that kids like to call screamo or hardcore, sooner or later you’ll realize you’re under scrutiny. The critic will probably start off by reminiscing about Majority Rule and pg99, comparing you to Orchid or Envy before rightfully asking what your contribution is to a music that is said to have peaked ten years ago.
Personally, I’m fucking stoked because of bands like Code Orange Kids. I saw them for the first time Monday night at the Charm City Art Space in Baltimore. Something about a post-industrial city – all those tall rusting buildings, the rail yard, the harbor water – it all lends itself to this type of hard, grimy music. Not to mention how creativity always seems to spawn wherever affordable spaces are abundant. Hailing from Pittsburg I bet their town has had a huge influence on their sound.
Actually I first heard about Code Orange Kids from Welch Canavan, a friend from DC who transplanted with several friends to Braddock, a town outside Pittsburgh that is said to be dying. Welch and company has been working on rebuilding houses and have even started booking shows. Their efforts were covered two years ago in a short documentary series as part of a Levi Strauss campaign. Somehow, even though it wasn’t my hands that held the hammer, I still felt proud seeing pictures of their newly refinished houses.
Meanwhile, back in metropolis, forces like gentrification and growing economic inequality are closing community run spaces, banning all age venues and displacing families who lived in neighborhoods that were once cultural hubs. The music that became our religion growing up has been co-opted and repackaged into an embarrassment: whiny white boys screaming I hate my ex-girlfriend and these are all the violent things I’d like to do to her, while assholes in the pit punch each other in the face. This is why people hate on screamo.
During Give, one of the songs Code Orange Kids played off their new album, the song slowed into a sludgy break down. Jami, Reba and Eric, their three vocalists started screaming, hands clenched together in praise while the rhythm pulls away/ there are no walls that can hold this. Tremendous. Reminds me of why I love punk.
It makes sense doesn’t it? The labor of the re-builder and labor of us as musicians is the same. Our music, our old house on the outskirts of another dying city.
http://www.ccspace.org/
http://codeorangekids.bandcamp.com/
http://codeorangekids.tumblr.com/
https://www.facebook.com/codeorangekids
