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ORBIT CULTURE “Death Above Life”
ORBIT CULTURE “Death Above Life”
By Dr. Abner Mality
ORBIT CULTURE is not a bad name for a band whose career has been like a rocket climbing from small town Sweden to the verge of stratospheric popularity. They are one of the bands being mentioned as leaders of the next generation of metal. That brings a heavy burden with it. “Death Above Life” is positioned to be a breakout album for them. Let’s see what’s going on with it.
It is very much a “modern” metal album. There’s nothing very traditional or oldschool about the style of metal they play. It strikes me as a combination of FEAR FACTORY-inspired industrial metal with elements of melodic death metal and radio-ready nu metal. So if you’re looking for the second coming of JUDAS PRIEST or IRON MAIDEN, forget it. But a major question concerning ORBIT CULTURE is: are they heavy enough?
I have to say they are. At times, the music on “Death Above Life” is devastatingly pulverizing and designed to crush. But the sound is also very clean and digitally shined up as well. You’re not getting heaviness in the style of FROZEN SOUL or 200 STAB WOUNDS. But this band definitely loves their death metal. “Bloodhound” is just a savage attack of industrial death and “The Storm” is a great example of melodic death metal in Swedish fashion. Only the sappy ballad “The Path I Walk” is an exception to the power shown elsewhere and the album would have been better if it had been dropped.
There is more going on than just crush, though. There’s a melodic, almost poppy side to some of the vocals and the ghost of LINKIN PARK and melodic metalcore hovers over many of the choruses. Songs like “Hydra” and “Neural Collapse” veer wildly between commercial choruses and ferocious beatdowns featuring deep growls. To me, a lot of these clean melodic parts kind of stick out like sore thumbs and seem designed to attract “core kiddies”.
There’s also a focus on cinematic and sci fi soundscapes. These are integrated a bit better into the music. There are parts in the title track and “The Tales Of War” when the electronic/symphonic aspects match the crunchy, choppy riffing. It’s weird when you hear an almost AVANTASIA soundscape dropped in the middle of mechanistic death metal beatdown, but it seems to be part and parcel of ORBIT CULTURE’s sound.
So we’re left with something of a mixed record. But looking at things on a deeper level, we are set to lose a lot of “legacy” metal bands in the next few years. The mainstream music industry is hellbent on not just ignoring heavy metal but wiping it out. So when a young band with genuine heaviness such as ORBIT CULTURE appears and draws a sizable following, I find it encouraging. I’m not 100% into everything they do, but I hope for continued success for these young Swedish fellows.
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