Moros Eros – Jealous Me Was Killed by Curiosity

Moros Eros is not a band you’d normally associate with Victory – far from it. They are neither the new wave emo like Silverstein, Drive Side Impact or Hawthorne Heights nor the tough guy hardcore like Ringworm, Darkest Hour or Path Of The Resistance. On top of that, they aren’t even similar to Victory‘s other oddballs like Streetlight Manifesto or The Tossers. Instead, Moros Eros is much more experimental, much more danceable and leaning more towards an indie pop style.

The sound is somewhere between The Killers and The Photo Atlas with a bit of modern indie pop like Modest Mouse thrown in to round off the edges. There’s a sort of sporadic nature to the songs built with angular guitars, choppy drumming with a lot of high hat and buzzing keyboard melodies. If you listen carefully, the distorted keyboards zoom in and out of the speakers, going in one speaker and slowly transferring over to the other creating a almost circular motion of music that I haven’t heard in a long time, this effect is particularly effective when listening to the album with headphones.

Despite the sporadic nature of the music, there’s also a danceable feel to record that comes through both the digitalized aspects of the band’s sound along with the post-hardcore aspects by creating a dark mixture of pop and indie rock that helps counteract the gloomy lyrical matter – somewhat like a indie oriented (and not quite as graphic) Schoolyard Heroes. The vocals are equally diverse. Going from the more direct delivery like the beginning of Safety Net to blistering screams like on Quit, You’re Bring Thoughtless, the vocals reach every point on the spectrum. However, for the most part they tend to stay in the atmospheric area with high pitched vocals that are constantly being cut off by dueling vocals or the slight variation in pitch.

In reality though, Jealous Me Was Killed By Curiosity is a rather perplexing release. Because even after listening to the release close to a dozen times now, I still can’t quite determine my feelings for it. The first time it blew me away, partly because it was not remotely close to being what I had expected to hear but also because it sounded good. The vocals were solid and right away Quit, You’re Being Thoughtless impressed me. Since then, I’ve listened to it a handful of times during which I couldn’t wait for it to end and move on to something else. My opinion had changed completely and while it was still a sound release, it failed to captivate me in the same way it initially did. But unlike many releases that just wear off and never hit that initial spark again, Jealous Me did hit that spark on a few occasions. So wshile not a consistently enjoyable release, there were a few times where I put it in and was thoroughly impressed once again. But my reactions have been so bi-polar, a final verdict in either a negative or positive respect would both be unfair.

So as it is, I leave it at 2.5/5. It’s danceable, it’s inventive and a few moments consistently stick out. On the other hand though, it can become tiresome if the listener isn’t in the right mood and in those moments, Jealous Me isn’t worth a second look no matter how inventive it is.