Orgy - Candyass
(Elementree / Reprise)
2 stars (out of 5 stars)
By Tony Bonyata
Spawned from the loins of industrial rock architects Ministry and Nine Inch Nails comes a new offspring of pseudo-aggressive, techno laced hard-rock in the form of Orgy, a quintet of Southern Californian neo-glam rockers.
Orgy is currently basking in their own fifteen minutes of fame with a respectable cover of New Order's, "Blue Monday" from their debut album, Candyass. While they really haven't lost any of the icy detachment of the original they manage, with thick slabs of guitar sludge and ranting vocals, to take it from the camped-up mid-eighties new wave dance floor and throw it headfirst into a nineties-styled mangled mosh-pit
Aside from their breakthrough cover hit, the rest of Candyass is filled with half-baked hard-rock, industrial and techno that never quite reaches the heights of those that have so apparently influenced them.
On the opening number "Social Enemies" and "Fiend" Orgy displays a similar sonic disorder reminiscent of Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails but ultimately lacks their highly textured, and often sinister, soundscapes. They make the fatal mistake of style before substance as they try to recreate the unbridled industrial blitzkrieg of Ministry on the ultimately empty song "Dissention". They are also visited by the spirit of goth-rock on "Dizzy" as vocalist Jay Gordon delivers his own ghoulish vocals in either homage to or blatant rip-off from goth-fathers Bauhaus.
There is no other artist, however, that Orgy so effortlessly 'borrows' from than shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, another disciple of hardcore industrial rock. Candyass is filled with second rate guitar dementia a la Manson's guitarist Twiggy Ramirez, as well as donning a similar heavy glam-rock sound that Manson brought out of the closet on his last album, Mechanical Animals. On the songs "Gender", "All The Same" and "Fetisha" it sounds at times as though Manson is channeling his disaffected vocals through Linda Blair and into Gordon.
Although Orgy's aim on Candyass may have been to sound as menacing as Marilyn Manson, they actually come off, with their glammed-up industrial-light-metal, a bit more Monroe than Charlie.