Canon In Miniature #194

Orchid Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow!

2000; Ebullition

There is a moment during “I Am Nietzche” where it clicked for the first time that this was probably one of the best composed pieces of hardcore I’d heard at that point. It’s the point when vocalist Jayson Greene is shouting at the top of his lungs while guitarist Will Killingstworth is matching his cadence beat for beat and Jeff Salane is drumming at a faster tempo than recommended by most physicians except instead of simply continuing in that vein the band reverts on a dime into the previously established and incredibly rousing ‘I MAKE THE SOUNDS THAT YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND!’ section without a second of hesitation. It’s a small moment that doesn’t merit notice at first, at least not at the stage where you can’t tell if those are riffs or just a barrage of noise coming out of the guitar, but it’s the key to why Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow! is the rare hardcore release that doesn’t leave me completely cold. It’s not just the passion that Orchid attack their material with, though that sort of ferocity does go a long ways towards winning me over, but the fact that beyond the passion there’s a hell of a lot of talent being put into something that could easily be mistaken for a broken speaker emitting feedback.

But let’s back up for a second here, because the moment that it clicked only really makes sense in context. Orchid’s mode of attack is straightforward and brutal; short songs, most barely hitting one minute in length, insane tempos and ferocious delivery. This should mean that they don’t leave an impression by virtue of their ephemeral nature – they’re gone in as much time as it takes to get used to them essentially – in the same way that so many similar releases sacrificed specific memorable qualities in favor of a simple aesthetic of ‘fast and pissed off.’ Even before it clicked Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow! felt significantly othered from its sonic peers by virtue of just how focused it was in its delivery. The guitar wasn’t just a wall of tremolo-strummed chords, it was a series of incredibly precise strikes that added up to something angularly melodic. The bass wasn’t doing as much to make itself heard as I’d like, but that aside it was providing more of an anchoring force than this type of music generally gets from that side of things. The drumming wasn’t a simple display of ‘heymalookhowfasticanplay!’ snare rolls and cymbal abuse, but a well-considered outburst that could shift at any second into a less frenetic but equally forceful section. The lyrics weren’t endless barrages of non-specific ‘fuck the man, man’ posturing, but…well they’re still kinda bullshit half the time but in a moderately interesting way at least. In other words, Orchid were doing things that I want this kind of music to do and not doing it in a way that made it any less frantic and powerful. So even before it really clicked it was priming me for some shade of greatness.

After it clicked though, it just kept getting better. There are some songs here that last less than a minute yet contain more interesting melodic ideas – they’re there, just obscured – than most modern progressive rock. There’s a song that’s 14 seconds long and is simply a retelling of a brief scene from Paris nous appartiennent that only just barely feels like a waste of valuable space. The few times that the songs stretch out beyond a minute or so, they build up a head of steam that would make any number of more obviously post-rock indebted screamo bands jealous; at times they even do this in a minute as on the fantastic opener “Destination: Blood!” whose climax sets an appropriately manic and off-kilter tone for everything that follows. The only issue comes when Jayson Greene’s lyrics veer into the notebook scribblings of a Philosophy 101 student, (and even then that gave us “I Am Nietzche” which could be the album’s highlight) otherwise the things that Orchid manage to do in 15 minutes is staggering in its effectiveness. The blows may be quick but they resonate like the mournful violin in the coda of “…And the Cat Turned to Smoke.” I may have wound up liking other so-called ‘emoviolence’ records more, but it all comes back to this one. It cracked the code for me and unlocked just how much there is going on beyond the wall of noise, and I am truly thankful for that. [8.9]