ORGY

After Candyass and the success surrounding Blue Monday, Orgy was now firmly on its throne. Sales were doing very well, requests for tours and interviews abounded and the group was being broadcasted on the majority of American radios and television channels. In short, everything was just perfect for Orgy and many people had their eyes fixated on them. It was time now to move forward with their next project. It was in this positive mood that the group created Vapor Transmission, an album that took the theme of science fiction and new technologies. Vapor Transmission’s first video Fiction (dreams in digital), which obtained respectable listening figures, perfectly underlines the philosophy behind Vapor Transmission. In the clip, there’s a woman attached with wires who is slowly moving down a long tunnel filled with robots. When she arrives at her destination, she lands in the middle of an Orgy concert with the band members playing the song. She seduces the singer of the group and goes back up to show him an army of robots she can control with her mind. We learn at the end of the clip that she is in fact an android...Videos were also done for Eva and Opticon but without the technology used in Fiction. Vapor Transmission is an album in which the group’s development and maturity is evident. Many formations end up finding their own sound after three or four tries, but in Orgy’s case the result is quite impressive. Vapor Transmission is perfectly constructed in the greatest detail and is worked much more technically than Candyass. The first listening is perhaps more difficult than for its predecessor, but the musical structure of the album is much deeper than Candyass. The media also paid tribute to a better tone to the album. During the writing of Vapor Transmission, the guys used unconventional instruments, such as guitar synths with seven strings and programmable drums, as well as voice coders which made Jay’s voice sound robotic. All of this resulted in a more personal touch to the album. The song Wheres Gerrold was actually a calling out to a friend and fan who followed them during Candyass but who suddenly disappeared. They had wrote the track in hoping to find him back. As we can see on the bands DVD Trans Global Spectacle, they finally find him back later on. The album sold more than 700,000 copies and went gold in the United States. Several reasons explain why the album did not achieve the same success as Candyass. Gordon blames post-Columbine conservatism for the records lower-than-expected sales. "I dont want moms to hate our band," exclaims Gordon. "I understand that theyre threatened by the name Orgy and they want to protect their kids, but my lyrics have some mystery behind them, and theyre open to interpretation. Im not going out terrorizing people or robbing banks. People judge us just because were real. Isnt one of the Ten Commandments, Thou Shalt Not Judge?" Also, sharing networks such as Napster, Kazaa, etc., began to see great development from the beginning of the 2000s, which almost certainly slowed down groups of this period. Punk Statik Paranoia is certainly the most controversial album by the group. To understand it, people need to know that Orgy was completely absent from the music scene for almost two years. Indeed, following the various tours of Vapor Transmission, which were interrupted by Amir’s poor health, the group withdrew from all projects for several months. Numerous things took place during this long silence. Firstly, the group left their label “Reprise”, a subsidiary of Warner Bros, for D1 Music, a label created by Jay himself (with help from his father Lou). Jay mentioned in several interviews that the main reason why Orgy left Warner Bros was because he had always wanted to create his own record label. Another reason explaining the long absence of the group was the fact that several members took time to dedicate themselves to other projects. Bobby went to join his brother at Snake River Conspiracy, an alternative rock band, and later on Ryan and Amir were at the very beginning of Julien-k. After these two years of absence, the group’s plan was to easily return to the forefront of the scene. This somewhat explains the commercial sound of Punk Statik Paranoia, an album easily accessible and less dark than its predecessors. The group wished to take advantage of the "New-Metal" vogue to recover; however, this vogue was already nearing its end. This attempt was criticized by numerous disappointed fans who said that the group had left behind their unique and authentic sound for the desire of a bigger media presence. The music was indeed much heavier, less electronic and synthetic, and the voices were more aggressive, etc. In brief, things were very different to what fans had been used to. All three singles from the album, The Obvious, Vague and Pure, achieved acceptable success on the radio considering the independent situation of the group. Vague was the official video. The group played the song in an empty factory, accompanied by fans and girls in bikinis. Once again, several fans of the group were disappointed by the clip, because it was similar to what was already on television. According to them, the group had not showed as much originality as they had in their previous videos. The video also did not included science fiction themes as was the case with Blue Monday, Fiction and Stitches. Almost seven years after Punk Statik Paranoias release, Jay Gordon sent letters to everyone else in the band informing them that he would end the partnership. According to him, everyone was too busy doing several other projects to continue with Orgy.