Vorhex Angel’s New Slow Burn "Okie’s Song I" Signals a Softer Turn for Ex-JEFF Brothers

Jake and Jamin Orrall have spent most of the last decade sounding like a battering ram with a hook: JEFF The Brotherhood’s Nashville-era racket and melody was built around brothers-in-collision. Vorhex Angel, their 2024 project with Kunal Prakash (Silver Synthetic), has felt like a continuation of that impulse when you catch the band live — a loud, hallucinogenic power trio. But the new single “Okie’s Song I,” taken from the forthcoming album Drain, leans quieter and, unexpectedly, pretty.

Drain follows January’s debut Heavenly, which the three released with a kind of restless momentum. Now the group is moving at speed again: Drain is due July 8 via Soul Selects, and the new single arrives like a recalibration. Rather than a blast of amp heat, “Okie’s Song I” is a slow, measured rock ‘n’ roll jam — patient guitar lines, a rhythm that breathes, and a solo that lands like a cold draft in a hot room.

Jake Orrall, who calls it “the most composed of the songs on Drain,” frames the lyrics plainly: a looped frustration, a negative pattern you can’t quite pry yourself from. That clarity in songwriting is part of what makes the track striking: it doesn’t rely on spectacle. It sits and allows the tension to do the work.

“The lyrics are about the frustration of being caught in a negative pattern, a feedback loop. I remember getting chills hearing Kunal’s solo in playback,” Jake Orrall said.

Kunal Prakash’s solo is the moment most likely to snag you. He describes the part as one he’d been holding on to for a while in different shapes. “I had this group of chords around for a long time and played it with lots of approaches but never shared it live or on a record,” Prakash said. “I always had a feeling the best way to use it would be with Jake and Jamin when the time was right.” Hearing it, you can believe him: the solo actually rips, in a way that complements instead of overwhelming the song’s hushed pulse.

The new single’s video, directed by Rett Rogers, pairs the studio intimacy of “Okie’s Song I” with snippets of the Vorhex Angel live identity — cutaways to sweaty, overcrowded stages and stretched, noisy jams that remind you the band still does volume well. There’s a tangible friction between the recorded softness and the live violence, and the video leans into that tension rather than resolving it.

For anyone who followed JEFF The Brotherhood through records like Hypnotic Nights, Vorhex Angel isn’t a shock so much as a logical detour. The brothers have always had a foot in songwriting and a foot in amplified chaos. Here they choose composition over commotion on a single, and that decision reshapes how you hear them. It’s not abandonment of the old approach; it’s a widening of the palette.

There’s also an industry-side reading: the Orralls and Prakash are moving fast, releasing multiple projects in a single year and even teasing more albums to come — an appetite that feels less like conventional album cycles and more like King Gizzard’s relentless output. That strategy can burn bright and quick; it also keeps attention in an attention-poor market. Musically, it allows the band to present different faces without being boxed into a single sound.

Tracklist

“A Prophecy”
“Weight”
“Okie’s Song I”
“Okie’s Song II”
“Honey”
“A Spark”
“The Great Fatted Bull (Stone Tablet #36)”

Tour dates

06/13 Hillsborough, NJ @ The Antique Barn (DRAIN record release party)
07/16 New York, NY @ Trans Pecos*
07/17 Bethlehem, PA @ ClubRealWorld*
07/18 Catskill, NY @ Avalon Lounge*
07/19 Brattleboro, VT @ Epsilon Spires*
07/20 Westfield, MA @ Hutghis*
07/21 New London, CT @ 33 Golden*
07/22 Boston, MA @ Deep Cuts*

* w/ Luke Schneider

Drain lands July 8 via Soul Selects. Vorhex Angel’s quick output — a debut in January, another album midyear, and talk of more to come — makes them one of the more unpredictable acts to watch this season: equal parts disciplined songwriting and the kind of live-minded noise the Orralls have always done best.