Moriah Formica

Bring It On! EP

By Jay Oakley

Moriah's debut release, Bring It On! is here. Moriah is already making waves with high praise from the likes of Halestorm's Lzzy Hale and Stryper's Michael Sweet. The album is quite stellar and showcases her powerful vocals and technical guitar playing. 

"Slave" is a very guitar-heavy and vocal forward track. Moriah's ability to hit high-range vocals is very apparent. The guitar playing is very aggressive and features an excellent solo bridge late in the track.

"Back Off" starts off with a solid series of guitar riffs and then breaks into a very soulful delivery when the vocals start. The chorus has a well designed meeting of guitars and vocals and gets revved up before it bridges back down to that soulful sound. This song features another quality solo to go along with Moriah's rhythm playing and technical ability brings the song to a close.

"Broken Soul" is a deep and powerful track. A much heavier guitar delivery matched with an emotional vocal performance. I find it to be a very relate-able song due to its ability to make the listener truly feel the emotion behind it.

"Lovestrong" opens with a lighter acoustic-style intro which flows nicely into a heavy guitar interlude. The majority of this song has a higher vocal delivery with moments of a deeper punch. There are also segments of well placed piano intertwined throughout the track.

"Save Me" has a ballad feel to it. It starts out as an acoustic track but after a momentary break hits hard with guitars. I find that the vocals for this song have a real strong feel to them and hit you right in the heart. "Save Me" also has more solid solo work and Moriah's own playing continues to show that she has a very firm grasp on what makes for quality guitar execution. This is also a rare type of song that if you were to come across it half way through you would stop, listen and then still want to know who it is so you can here it from the start.

"Bring It On" is the most aggressive song on the record. A high paced, heavy riffing song that features Michael Sweet as a guest performer. "Bring It On" holds many of the qualities that are needed in stellar rock music. It's ability to have intelligent lyrics, proper playing, feeling and it shows that there is still a sound out there that gives us everything we need in heavy music. The track has, easily, my favorite solo (performed by Michael) which boarders on that great sleazy sound from back in 80s LA.

Moriah is already showing that she is ahead of the curve. She has all the qualities in a true hard rock musician. I'm confident that because of the people she's worked with and the advice she's received that she will stay on the right path and give the hard rock public exactly what they've been drooling for.