Pittsburgh head-stompers Code Orange started out as a chaotic hardcore band. For the past few years, they’ve steadily moved in a different direction, toward a kind of industrial-flavored mall-metal. Along the way, they’ve lost some fans and gained plenty of others, but I really like every incarnation of this band. Earlier this year, Code Orange released What Is Really Underneath?, a full reworking of their 2020 album Underneath. Today, they’ve followed that one with two new singles, their first since the divisive 2021 one-off “Out For Blood.”

“Grooming My Replacement,” the first of the two new Code Orange songs, is a down-tuned blitzkrieg aimed at motherfuckers who talk shit: “The insects come to life under the movie lights/ I keep a list in my mind of the times that you cried ‘neophyte.'” “The Game,” the other new one, is another jagged attack, and this one seems to be about destructive cycles of social-media outrage.

Both of these new songs remind me of what Code Orange were doing back on 2014’s I Am King. They’re not full-on hardcore, but they don’t sound like they were made with Hot Topic in mind, either. The heavy parts are heavy, and the chaotic parts are blurry and feverish. You could definitely mosh to these songs. Listen below.

“Grooming My Replacement” b/w “The Game” is out now on the new label Blue Grape Music.