There’s no question that Dry-Rot were one of the better (if not the best) hardcore bands of the past few years, on both a musical and even a purely aesthetical level. As smart as they were punishing. Bands that good don’t tend to last long but by the end of their tumultuous existence the had at least managed to give us more than a few EPs, a phenomenal LP and a “controversial” MRR interview to remember them by. Post-DR bands started to spring up soon after, still on their own Cold Vomit label, including the excellent Heavy Air flexi (and tape) and some demos by a band called Uranium Orchard. Last year UO released their first LP, which became one of my most listened-to records of the past year. Expanding their hardcore agressiveness to a much wider sonic template made for intriguing listening, but the real hook were the ideas. These were songs that actually had something to say, songs with ideas, songs with intelligence behind them that beckoned you to figure out their intentions or motifs. I suppose this is the point where religion comes into the conversation, but much like Dry-Rot was never a band who preached overtly through their music, the same goes for Uranium Orchard. Talking about religion or God is no different to talking about love, sex, or death in rock’n’roll as far as I’m concerned. I’m much more interested in this band’s reasons and process for creating such incredible music than I am worried about their stance on abortion. But anyway, I’m veering off topic…the LP became an obsession for me and I wanted to try an decipher some of it’s codes so I e-mailed Jordan of the band to ask him a bunch of questions, as I’ve done to him repeatedly since the Dry-Rot days. I figured that since I was asking we might as well turn it into an interview for Termbo, which was something I had been meaning to do with him since Dry-Rot was still functioning anyway. In the meantime, the band had also released the “Unchurched Shithead” EP early this year, songs I had the privelege of hearing in demo form and were thrilled to see on vinyl so quickly. It packed the same wide scope into a smaller frame, six songs of powerful music and engaging themes that is one of my favorite records of 2013. I’ll warn you in advance, if you haven’t given this band a chance you are missing out, and you should probably dip into the waters a bit or at least listen along while you read this interview. There aren’t many bands making music this interesting right now, and I urge you not to miss out. Click below to enter. (Ed: I know we promised some reviews first, but upon editing I realized half of them were bullshit, so we’re still working on it. they’ll be up soon.)
