Orbital Gate – “A Resistance In Peril”

DOGI Recordings

Over the weekend I had a pretty typical millennial Halloween. You know, exercised my constitutional right to vote, went to a suburban metal show, got engaged, standard stuff. One of the bands featured on the Heavy Halloween bill in West Chicago was Orbital Gate, the self-described “ONE WOMAN SLAMMING BRUTAL DEATH METAL BAND” from the town of Cary, Illinois. While the live band performed as a quartet, costumed as Ernie from Sesame Street and, I believe, a freshly-grazed Charlie Kirk, Orbital Gate on all recordings is solely Eva Van Dyne, and her new album Engineering His Planetary Dominion arrives this Friday. To celebrate All Hallow’s Eve and the one-week countdown to her drop date, the project premiered the third single “A Resistance In Peril” with a music video the day before and its live debut that night.

Engineering His Planetary Dominion is “a concept album based on the story of Borderlands 2,” according to the Orbital Gate Bandcamp page, a franchise I have admittedly zero knowledge about but am getting my crash course in with this single. “A Resistance In Peril” is a violently head-knocking metal track with roots in the progressive deathcore boom of the late 2000s and 2010s, taking notes from bands like The Contortionist, The Faceless, and Fallujah. Its accompanying video, while mostly a standard performance clip, includes footage of Van Dyne actually playing the game, assuredly fighting her way through the titular perilous resistance. And she didn’t compose this track completely alone, as it features vocals from Daniel Burris of Kentucky bands Alessa and Gamma Sector.

Van Dyne is an unfathomable powerhouse of a performer; while handling all instruments, mixing, and mastering, she excels at seemingly every aspect of a modern metal band. Orbital Gate is guttural, full-force music that goes to eleven in every direction, and she makes it so that it doesn’t matter if you’ve never touched a game controller in your life or your cheese-crusted fingers can flex the Konami code in your sleep. “A Resistance In Peril” is just the latest heavy taste of what could be this month’s most exciting underground record.