Bay Area queer deathrock stalworts MOIRA SCAR are back with their new full length on CD/CS/ and digital via Oakland’s NEAR DARK imprint, which is run by dark gothic outfit, OTZI whose newest offerings, “Ghosts” was covered HERE a few weeks ago. Moira Scar currently is in trio form with their latest offering with Roxy Monoxide: guitar, sax, vocals, LuLu Gamma Ray: synthesizers, vocals, and Aimee S: drums. Moira Scar’s newest full length, “Wound World Part 1” boasts seven snappy, punchy, femme forward dark punk/death rock cuts, intentionally building upon their unique, sought after, indimable sound of their previously released full lengths, “Psychoid” and “Scarred For Life”. With an augmented lineup, and a slightly darker and more rock forward sound, “Wound World Part 1” might be the most intentionally straight forward, intense and focused sound the outfit has concocted yet, and the recording production suits the sound perfectly. Thick pummeling percussion, wailing, screaching vocals, fuzzed-out chugging, angular guitar riffs and the staple walls of reverb’d saxophone.
“Snap Back” might be the most traditionally “Moira Scar” sounding cut on here blending heavy bass riffs, walls of sax with driving punk inspired hard hitting drumming and the signature layered vocal efx stylings which could take the sonic shape of anything from low distorted growls to high pitched shrieks of intense washes, utilized to great success on the track “Chrysalis Skull” The operatic style walls of vocals blend perfectly over the frantic, manic heavy drumming and thick slabs of guitar and bass work. Slower, more post rock inspired track “Zeta Rainbow” offers chugging, blown up guitar riffs with dragging slagged out bass lines with more traditional breakdowns where the guitar and dual vocal processions shine brightest.
Moira Scar’s sound is thick, violent, present, and demanding of the space it requires and deserves. Death rock, like any “sub-genre” can be formulaic, boring, and predictable, but “Wound World Part 1” is the complete opposite; fierce, unique, cathartic, and nasty!. In a time where we need it most, Moira Scar once again, and perhaps with more force than ever proves they are here to stay with some of the most forward thinking and necessary sonic offerings within the contemporary rock scope. This record rallies against the dying, boring, overdone and under thought droves of CIS white-male “dominated”capitalistic rock scenes, by raising the bar and flushing the boring and inspired rock trends down into the sewer where they have belonged this entire time, and serve as an assault on the normative, re-hashed, uninspired music that often fills the airwaves. Moira Scar is a weapon against a violent, patriarchal system of despair, confusion, and entanglement and “Wound World Part 1” is the next logical step in the bands seemingly endless progression of reinvention. One of the most important contemporary dark rock acts going, period. This record is not to be overlooked.
D E C A Y C A S T Magazine 