Mass Movement of the Moth Outerspace (2006) Exotic Fever

Screamo is starting to become such a clichéd and pretentious genre. I take that back -- it has always been pretentious and is not really a correct genre to begin with. It has become a necessity to have unfitting melodic breakdowns and incoherent guitars with overly dramatic lyrics and singing. Every band draws influence from the same select few landmark bands, and at the end of the day they walk away with four or five-star reviews for their generic albums. Any listener that is not keen on the genre wonders why such a horrible mess of noise is so praised. Mass Movement of the Moth is not one of those bands and somehow they’ve been lumped in with the screamo cliché.

Outerspace is a dark, creative, guitar/synth driven punk album that turns corners and skips steps, failing at points but shining more often than not. The album can even be psychedelic even. You could dance to it if you feel like you need to dance. You could get lost in the mystical aura produced by the synth that really brings an eerie, haunting aspect to Outerspace. Such a very fitting album name for a very diverse record. They bring a full sound to the table, fronted by tounge in cheek lyrics spat out in disgust.

Where Mass Movement fails between the salsa shuffles and the carnival-esque breakdowns is the horrible random scratchy, rough vocals they’ll throw into the mix every so often. Also the forced off-timing measures that are really uncalled for. They’re a talented bunch but they have their heads in the wrong places at times. Production-wise it’s a raw and gritty album but hell yeah, that’s punk rock. I would like to point out that the guitar work done by the single guitarist is very impressive. Also the female vocals at the end of “Ours We Are” is a true gem.

I don’t think I could emphasize how great they pull the awkward influence of disco, salsa, and other music into Outerspace. If this band sticks around they’ll stir things up and I guarantee gather a large following. This band is all over the place with this first full-length effort. Check it out, you’ll be impressed.

(Sirens)