Following up its 1997 platinum-selling debut Candyass, glam/techno/metal act Orgy return to the fold with a bizarre yet occasionally engaging follow-up, Vapor Transmission.
Orgy
Vapor Transmission
Reprise Records
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The first single off the album, "Fiction (Dreams in Digital)," is a catchy riff on the band's prototypical sound and is making the rounds with frequent airplay on MTV and numerous radio stations. The tune serves as a great example to the occasional bursts of various sounds spurred by Orgy, smoothly balancing both the mellow and the abrasive alongside the band's standard techno influences.
The album's real coup, however, is a song entitled "Eva" about album producer Josh Abraham's late mother. It seems as though the men and solitary woman of Orgy actually took a millisecond away from fiddling with their mascara to put enough thought into churning out a really decent tribute. The song softens the normally sterile sound of Orgy. In fact the tune sounds as though it is by a completely different band altogether. Perhaps that's why this critic enjoyed the tune so damned much.
A few other tracks on the album warrant praise. "The Odyssey," "Dramatica," "Opticon" and "Eyes-Radio-Lies" are all rather catchy, clearly differentiating themselves from Orgy's incessant, repetitive sound. These songs take the aforementioned conventions and bend them; hence making them worlds more tolerable than the rest of Vapor Transmission.
The rest of the album could be the same song continuously repeated as far as this reviewer is concerned; there's that little variance of sound in between each of the weak links featured upon the album. Essentially, Vapor Transmission is a really decent half album.
Try as they might, this is one Orgy that listeners will inevitably choose to avoid, despite the few shining moments.
