I was delving through my ‘to review’ pile and shoved
Moorea into my computer purely because of the artwork. The penned image is very clichéd but I quite like the washed out look of the orange. Oh, they’ve got that in their name, haven’t they. Clever, that.
The first thing that came to mind when I whacked this on was that it sounded is that this sounded like a marginally less shit Norma Jean, but then as I continued you realise that the screams are throatier and the some of the riffs are straight out of the “down and dirty rock & roll” style that works so well for The Bronx and Cancer Bats (‘Crooked Tooth Storyteller’ is a good example). A feature which, if I’m honest, prevented me from dismissing The Orangeburg Massacre as being just being the latest imprint from a well-worn and overdone mould, but at the same time realised it was hardly breaking any new ground.
Maybe “down and dirty” is the next ‘in’ thing. Maybe it isn’t. But it seems to be experiencing a bit of a surge in popularity this year. Anyway, it’s fair to say this record has plenty of faults – ‘Serenity Far Far Later’ sounds like a terrible combination of Converge and Soundgarden, and I think the band could really make better use of breakdowns for the most part (as they actually do on ‘Speakeasy Confrontation’) – a change of pace simply isn’t enough. An occasional flash of promise can’t disguise the fact that there’s nothing innovative about this and despite its relative technical competence it really does make it hard work for you to like it.
