| Reviews of Vapor Transmissions |
Alternative Press
September 2000 issue
"Orgy
5 - Vapor Trasmissions (on a scale of 5)
America's premier cosmetic rockers hope the next youth revolution will be fought with selective compassion, Max Factor and automatic weapons.
There's no denying that the synth-lacquered pop on Orgy's 1998 debut album, Candyass, wielded equal amounts of glamour, angst and fury. If these guys were around in 1985, the papers would have been filled with reports about the band f*ing up Duran Duran's entire entourage without smudging their mascara. They would have been the New Romantic band whose t-shirts were proudly worn by Slayer fans. But, alas, Orgy weren't around then, so America has to put testicle-free pussies like Wang Chang, Spandau Ballet and the Fixx up the charts, while the rest of us prayed for Simon LeBon's yacht to go down for the last fuggin' time.
Orgy's latest communiqué, Vapor Transmissions, has equal parts heightened aggression and vulnerability, as well as a keen sense of nostalgia. They've refined their studies of the schematics to Trent Reznor's hate machine, taken the pick-ax to industrial-rock's artistically barren parameters, repeatedly rented Blade Runner and Liquid Sky to cop fashion tips and perhaps checked eBay to see if there were any Classix Nouvaeux dance mixes they hadn't heard. [Damn! -- obscure-transpotting-reference ed.]
When singer Jay Gordon proclaims, "Welcome to the odyssey!" on "Odyssey," he's rewriting the same map that Rush used to try to get to "Xanadu" over two decades ago. "Suckerface" gives brittle empowerment to every person deceived by a vacant Abercrombie bitch or football-jersyed thug. "Eva," a tribute to producer Josh Abraham's deceased mother, offers both faith and conflict, while secreting a wrenching melancholy that should have been on the last Cure album. "Opticon" is a towering Max Factor-polished middle finger to the cynics who dismissed the band as children of the Korn. On "Saving Faces," the band serve up Tubeway Army vibes with a click track aimed to lure Jnco-panted into their realm. "Chasing Sirens" is a chugging runway floorshow that's heavier that the entire pressing run of Static-X's Wisconsin Death Trip chained to the Loch Ness Monster's tits.
Vapor Transmissions is a hymnal for brave new citizens who have adopted The Matrix as a religion while using artifice as deception for their sinister subtexts. Will the next revolution be taken by Glock-toting transvesteens who swap clothing like mix tapes while blasting Orgy's frantic "107" as their cochleas stream blood? Hey, reader, how do you know I'm not wearing my wife's underwear and cleaning my nickel-plated .357 as I write this, minutes before I head off to practice social Darwinism at a sports bar? -Jason Pettigrew"
