“We don’t even realise we left the world behind.”
Wubbing into life not unlike they did back on 1997’s Frequencies from Planet 10, Orange Goblin return with Science, Not Fiction, which sees the band continue to fly the flag for good old fashioned rock n’ roll. The album will easily appeal to fans old and new, with as much in common with the earliest works under the Orange Goblin banner as it does with the band’s previous release, 2018’s “The Wolf Bites Back”.
The band explore a few different facets of their brand of hard rock – tracks like the album’s introduction, “The Fire at the Centre of the Earth”, with all its glorious melody and lyrics that seal the deal of being a badass rock n’ roll song are a full-steam-ahead freight train, barrelling toward the gates of hell. The same can be said of track three, “Ascend the Negative”, which would easily find itself at home blaring from a bar with a line of gleaming Harley Davidson motorcycles out the front, but the band switch it up a little for “Not Rocket Science”. The song is a less heavy affair that is not so riff-focused, consisting largely of very simple Ramones-esque down-picked power chords that bring to mind the music of The Wildhearts. Though the song itself is not bad, I am unsure just how it fits into the overall sonic identity of the album.
“False Hope Diet” sees the band dipping their toes back into a gruff brand of long-form blues jams established in “The Stranger” from their previous album, The Wolf Bites Back. Though the song is not as straight-ahead blues as was “The Stranger”, I’d love to see the band flesh this out across their next album, as they do this style of blues incredibly well. Sonically, I can only describe the music as evolving gradually into this huge explosion of beautiful, dense layers, with wailing guitar soloing blazing away over the top. The solos are reminiscent of BB King floating endlessly through the cosmos, his iconic red Gibson ES-355 in hand, whilst all human civilisation crumbles dramatically below. It’s all tied together with a subtly present Hammond organ humming away in the background, holding down the chords for the guitars to do their thing and colouring the whole thing blue. It’s really something else. Separately from “The Stranger”, a lot of the compositional decisions in “False Hope Diet” reminded me of the groovy thrasherisms of Satan, particularly in the riffing which is most pronounced perhaps around 2:05.
The lyrics of “False Hope Diet” caught my ear, as they appear to describe many controversial conspiracy theories of the day. This includes chemtrails, “mystery vaccines” for “man-made epidemics”, as well as “holy wars and genocide for fairytale beliefs”. The band have often written about dystopian future situations, and this song appears to follow the narrative that we ourselves live in an Orwellian dystopia today. Though I’d hope the lyrics are not reflective of the band’s own opinions, it is clear that the lyrics are deliberately a look at the state of the world around us post-COVID.
One thing that can be said of Science, Not Fiction is that it is gloriously unquantized, yet it is well-produced. Science, Not Fiction is the sound of a rock band with modern production techniques used as is absolutely necessary to compliment the recordings – and that is it. No grids, no fixes in post, just proper rock n’ roll polished a bit – but not too much. “The Justice Knife” exemplifies this well, reminding me of Acid King, a band we recently caught live at this year’s Desertfest music festival, who follow this same mantra when approaching their recorded output: filthy rock n’ roll, screened in HD.
“Cemetery Rats” may start a little Cradle of Filth, but don’t worry, Orange-fucking-Goblin baby haven’t begun to don their goth attire just yet. The song starts with a disgusting, slimy bass riff that is sure to get stank faces going, before launching headlong into no-holds-barred riffing that is the manifestation of Celtic Frost in Orange Goblin form – dissonant, crushing, and above all, fast and heavy. Speed is not uncommon on Science, Not Fiction, with another good example being “The Fury of a Patient Man”, which serves an ode to the struggle of those good souls amongst us. The energy of this song in particular strongly harks back to the band’s 2002 album Coup De Grace, which can be compared to almost a form of fan service given Science, Not Fiction’s infinitely more palatable production than Coup De Grace’s.
Purchasers of the deluxe editions of Science, Not Fiction will also get to hear “Eye of the Minotaur”, a little track that musically sits somewhere between White Zombie’s La Sexorcisto: Devil’s Music Volume 1 and the biker metal of Black Label Society. Though it isn’t vastly different from the rest of the album, “Eye of the Minotaur” is a great straight-ahead rock song with heavy riffs-a-plenty, though I can definitely see why it wasn’t included on the main track listing – a track like this could easily be perceived as filler. I can see this one being a mosh-starter live, with plenty of handbanging potential in its 4:44 duration.
“End of Transmission” is about as progressive as the band gets this time around, and for a person who doesn’t particularly love the pretentious, introspective nature of 99% of prog, the band does a good job here keeping my interest. It is just enough parts prog to be interesting, but retains the characteristics of a rock band that we all came for when we put an Orange Goblin album on in the first place. Sonically, the band channels Mastodon’s Crack the Skye a little here, as well as the likes of Opeth’s Ghost Reveries, and some of the chord choices and structural decisions reminded me of Die So Fluid’s Not Everybody Gets a Happy Ending. It is certainly up there as one of my favourite parts of the album, making good use of chord relationships as well as lyrics and vocal delivery to convey an ethereal image of doomsday, which is a notably unique and very interesting concept. The band use dynamic shifts to contrast the chaos of the earth they are describing against the peaceful cosmos above them, which highlights this idea of ‘how did we get here from where we started?’ very well. It is a very clever way of posing a philosophical question to the listener without undermining their intelligence – as the golden rule goes: show, don’t tell.
In conclusion, Orange Goblin’s 10th album does not at all disappoint, delivering a collection of tracks that do precisely what you’d want them to, as well as just a little more. The band really should flesh out their style of blues rock as heard on Science, not Fiction in the form of “False Hope Diet” on their next album, as when the band do this style it really stands out to me as something they know how to do well. Though I was not such a fan of the rather jump-up-and-down, punky nature of “Not Rocket Science”, the song itself isn’t bad – it just left me feeling a little confused as to how it fits in to the sonic identity of Science, Not Fiction overall, given its lack of similarity in tone to much of the rest of the album. Regardless, it’s still a great rock n’ roll song, so it is by no means disappointing. Across the rest of the album, the band play into elements of their past releases, including Frequencies from Planet 10 and Coup De Grace. This really says to me this is a band who are genuine, never bowing to the phantom pressure of imaginary fans who want them to change it up – we don’t! When you put on the latest album by a band you like, you want to hear them playing their music, with no higher influence on the final product, and Orange Goblin clearly understand this. Though it is true that the little changes present on Science, Not Fiction are welcome, the band are careful to only implement such changes in order to keep their music fresh.
8/10
Science, Not Fiction drops on the 19th July through Peaceville Records and can be pre-ordered here: Eyesore Merch / Peaceville Records.