Orgy: Vapor Transmission

Orgy made their name on Alternative radio last year with their cover of New Order’s “Blue Monday”, from their 1998 release Candyass. It was an excellent treatment that showed much promise for this band. Unfortunately, nothing on Vapor Transmission meets up to the promise of “Blue Monday”.

Orgy’s biggest problem is lack of creativity. Every song in the same key, with guitars and keyboards blending into a monotone drone, it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the next begins. The one song which rises above the drone, “Fiction (Dreaming in Digital)”, still only barely manages to do so. A few songs have promising beginnings (such as “Chasing Sirens”) but soon sink into the same bashing metal guitar chords as every other song on the disc.

There’s no support from the words, either. The lyrics are all attitude with little substance. “What would you do if you finally beleived in yourself” they ask in “The Odyssey…”, “But you just don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground”. Um, ‘scuse me but, huh? What does the one have to do with… never mind. While they are not the first to write lyrics that don’t seem to make a lot of sense (calling on Tori Amos and Paul Simon), but these songs are just strings of cliches rather than metaphors waiting to be deciphered. There’s no there there (to employ a cliche they don’t use). “Vapid Transmissions”, if you will. Jay Gordon’s vocals don’t help; as monotonous as the guitars, the tone adds only more wasted angst to lyrics that are mainly about what big meanies people are.

Comparing their cover of “Blue Monday” to the material on this CD, it’s easy to conclude that Orgy does much better with other peoples’ songs.