Swallowing the Rabbit Whole

The opening salvo of *Underneath* is a sixty-second-feeling assault stretched across three minutes of whiplash. It begins mid-panic, riffs jerking in fits and starts, the arrangement built from hard cuts rather than transitions — a song edited more than composed, with silence used as a weapon between blasts. Reba Meyers' guitar tone is dry, serrated, almost brittle, and the low end lands like something falling down stairs. The vocal delivery is pure adrenaline: clipped, barked phrases in the verses, then a chorus that opens into an unexpectedly melodic lift before being yanked back under. The title's Alice-in-Wonderland inversion is the point — not falling down the hole but devouring it, taking the delusion inside yourself willingly. Lyrically it's about complicity in your own distortion, the moment you stop being deceived and start volunteering. Released January 2020 as the record's lead statement, it announced that Code Orange had abandoned any interest in genre respectability. Best experienced at volume in motion — walking fast, driving too aggressively, or in the first thirty seconds of a set when the room hasn't decided what it's in for yet. It rewards repeat listening because the seams keep revealing new fractures.