My early 20s were a time fraught with experimentation of practically any sort you’d care to imagine. Some of those early alchemical attempts “took”, becoming part of my fiber to this day, some not at all, and some “took” in ways they shouldn’t have. Of the former, a video store (VHS, natch) rental of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s first English-language film, Santa Sangre, resulted in that uncomfortable yet strangely titillating sensation of someone dipping their fingertips into the edges of your mind, toying, testing. While backtracking through Jodorowsky’s previous works, I came upon 1973’s The Holy Mountain, which was the equivalent of that same hand in an acid-soaked glove, fist-fucking your brain while it was still inside your skull.

All to say, that’s what ORPHAN DONOR’s Unraveled is to last year’s Old Patterns. While the debut was deserving of the cursory few listens, SECRET CUTTER drummer Jared Stimpfl was apparently knee deep into what would become his second under the ORPHAN DONOR moniker. And it’s a good thing he was, too, as the emotional tumor given a passing glance in the first is lanced like a boil, a cyst, a mental hemorrhoid, excised and put on display in musical/vocal form.

Joined again by Chris Pandolfo of CLOUDS COLLIDE on vocals, ‘Pendelum Grip’ has a bit of the much underrated SOFY MAJOR in its disjointed fragility, Stimpfl’s main instrument clearly in the fore, lending an almost martial air to the proceedings, albeit at Mach 4. ‘Forever Unseen’ flirts with post-core, KEELHAUL and KYLESA being sonic reference points, while the title track invites THE LOCUST over for a visit in its frantic panic-attack level spazz-out.

While very little – if any – of what’s happening within Unraveled would have fit in SECRET CUTTER, it’s clear that ORPHAN DONOR is of the same bloodline, distantly, moments of ‘My Friend, The Hornet’ painting with the same wide, Jackson Pollock-inspired palette. More an aural collage than a standard song, closer ‘Celestial Mourning’ is a feast for the ears at 11 minutes, and the reason a vinyl press and headphone listen makes sense.
Equal parts caustic and cathartic, is Unraveled.
Review By: Lord Randall

ORPHAN DONOR
Unraveled
Zegema Beach Records
3 / 6