Rolling 2023 Metal thread

What can you tell me about Messa? Seeing them Sunday.

They're great. I reviewed their most recent album for The Wire:

Messa
Close
Svart CD/DL/LP
Italy’s Messa came out of the gate strong and have steadily pushed at the limitations of doom and occult rock, challenging themselves and their listeners in a way that aligns them more with experimentalists like Spain’s Orthodox than with trad acts seeking nothing more than to sound like their favourite Ozzy-era Black Sabbath bootlegs. Their 2016 debut Belfry ran the gamut from rumbling drone tracks (“Alba”) via Danzig meets Heart anthems (“Hour Of The Wolf”) to the astonishing “Blood”, a nearly 11 minute track that pushed vocalist Sara Bianchin’s voice through a rack of effects while making room for eerie, warped clarinet and saxophone solos.

Messa’s second album, 2018’s Feast For Water, was more focused but just as powerful. Bianchin had become a much more powerful singer, capable of haunted wailing and gentle murmurs. The eight minute “Leah” transitioned smoothly from a thunderous doom riff to crooned, almost Mazzy Star-ish vocals over gentle, haunting electric piano – then the guitars came back in, with bonus spaghetti western twang to give it all that much more epic sweep. Drummer Rocco Toaldo’s mastery of space and dynamics anchored the music, driving it while allowing it to feel like it was expanding and contracting naturally, on its own.

Close is the band’s first album for Finland’s Svart label. It starts right up, with no preamble beyond a few seconds of keyboard before the riff to “Suspended” comes crashing in. Bianchin’s voice floats in a cloud of reverb, surrounded at first by massively distorted guitars and later by cleaner tones; the first big surprise comes when the solo is not a Tony Iommi-esque explosion, but a gentle Pat Martino-like jazz reverie.

The next track “Dark Horse” might feature the fastest tempo in the entire Messa catalogue to date; at one point, Bianchin lets out an exultant yelp. “Rubedo” vacillates between crushing whomp and a delicate, sardonic melody (and arena-ready guitar solo) worthy of Blue Öyster Cult, and the saxophone returns, forcefully, on the nearly 11 minute “0 = 2” as the band galumph along. Messa prove that doom is far from beholden to tradition; indeed, it’s wide open territory.

new Afterbirth today!

oh god i love this new priest song

I feel like my great grandkids are gonna be raving about new Priest and Maiden.

Crazy how good both bands have stated this late into their lives

New track indeed fire

always been a huge Turbo (and not huge but way more than most) Ram It Down fan so this fits the bill nicely

The new Priest earns that epic intro.

they better release the Stock Aitken Waterman tracks as bonus tracks.

someone has to release the full track of their cover of You are Everything, dammit

like this is the best thing ever but i want it all!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL1JFybK9FE

Love the new Dream Unending tracks. To continue from the Tomb Mold discussion upthread, they're kinda like a Tomb Mold with the ratio of death metal to jazzy prog fusion reversed.

https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/starpath

I'm sure the new Temperance album is going to take over much of my attention once I let it, but for the moment I'm enjoying a little obsessive looping of this amazing Sister Shotgun song:

https://open.spotify.com/track/0CofWYL9PCd2t67WdksS1I

fundraiser for Sean's family.

https://gofund.me/ad5dbc16

hey prolly a longshot, but: in '84 (pretty sure of year) Kerrang! ran a vicious, very short pan of an early Voivod (i think War and Pain, but maybe Rrroooaarr), and i'm trying to find a scan of it, or the text, or ha-ha a pointer to a library that might let me go through Kerrang! archives

also, nice to see names i remember after a long time away. hope you've all been well, at least by 2020s standards

also also brand new cirith ungol!? i'm unreasonably excited

Welcome back.

Messa was pretty good last night. Great vocals, though that's not the only thing that makes the group standout. I could imagine them really cracking the code and coming up with something even cooler in the near future.

can't deal with new Temperance singer

The new Afterbirth album is so fucking good. I wish I could review it for The Wire.

Hey summervillain!

https://64.media.tumblr.com/8956a63c7555bbb6c23a647b35dc5499/tumblr_n2p2hwwwxk1qfnqgvo1_1280.jpg

oh wow, thank you! that is amazing. I think it was actually the Mr X review that I saw waaaay back when, but I think this will work for my purposes if I can't find the original slagging.

so OF COURSE I'm playing War & Pain now, for the first time in a while, and didn't Kerrang! usually love Motorhead? coz I hear a lot of Motorhead influence...

Just from that selection Adrien posted, I'm wondering if Kerrang! even liked metal back then?

extreme metal was extreme then, they were probably still clutching Raven and Saxon tightly

XR = Xavier Russell. He has a famous dad.

He eventually became the thrash metal guy

Bertrand Russell?

lol, no

Never mind Bathory, more like Bath Plughole

hahaha

aside from that zinger for the ages, I cant say that made me particularly nostalgic for that era of music criticism

SO many people hated Voivod in 1984. Including 14 year-old me!!! I came around a few years later.

I remain unconverted.

:: The new Afterbirth album is so fucking good. I wish I could review it for The Wire.

if i pause this at random moments coz i have to run to a meeting when i come back i can very briefly mistake it for Discipline-era-KC or even Synchronicity-era-Police
...so yes into the shopping cart we go

New Job For A Cowboy song — new album in February:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1ZRjEdIOGo

I've always liked these guys, and their journey from knuckle-walking deathcore to Decrepit Birth-ish prog-death has been weird and fascinating.

Can't say I always liked them, but I really did like Sun Eater. Kinda figured these guys were done for good after a decade, excited for that new one.

since i’m a simpleton, i think i’ll give a slight edge to the previous afterbirth after a few spins of the new one. i do get a little bored with parts of the second side. but this stuff rips and they’re easily one of long island’s greatest achievements, up there with disgustingly enormous portions of cheese-drenched pasta and mariah carey.

Starting to feel like a defining characteristic of recent death metal is how catchy the non-heavy parts of songs are. The new Afterbirth sounds like two bands with their own influences fighting for the spotlight. Felt the same about the recent Tomb Mold. I love metal, but almost wish these groups would trash the monster vox and just completely give in to their Cynic or, like, 80s King Crimson urges.

I guess I should have said "I love death metal" there, not to imply either band wouldn't be "metal" if they did that.

I love metal, but almost wish these groups would trash the monster vox and just completely give in to their Cynic or, like, 80s King Crimson urges.

This is how I've felt about Enslaved for a decade or more. The harsh vocals are basically a vestigial organ at this point; they should drop 'em and go full prog.

2 thoughts, nearly contradictory
i like plenty of metal this is just pure no-hyphens, but most of the stuff I love BEST fits only uneasily in its primary style.
i appreciate some metal vocal styles more when i don't think of them as singing, but a weird gnarly instrument that happens to be built-in

man the Afterbirth is great because of its contrasts - there was a while where 'avantgarde' death metal bands were forgetting to hit you in the mouth with riffs but Afterbirth do that and then create dream-like sequences as beautiful as any art-rock band and it doesn't sound jarring or gimmicky. loved their last one, really love this one.

]] man the Afterbirth is great because of its contrasts

yeah, I don't think it would be nearly as interesting as a pure prog record. that sense that you don't know which direction it will come from next is a lot of what makes it fun for me.

i appreciate some metal vocal styles more when i don't think of them as singing, but a weird gnarly instrument that happens to be built-in

This is precisely why I love brutal death metal — a) the vocals are just another sound and b) the almost-always-terrible lyrics are rendered incomprehensible.

This is precisely why I love brutal death metal — a) the vocals are just another sound and b) the almost-always-terrible lyrics are rendered incomprehensible.

yep. I also like that I can listen while working and not get distracted by the lyrics.

man the Afterbirth is great because of its contrasts - there was a while where 'avantgarde' death metal bands were forgetting to hit you in the mouth with riffs but Afterbirth do that and then create dream-like sequences as beautiful as any art-rock band and it doesn't sound jarring or gimmicky. loved their last one, really love this one.

agreed about the contrasts but the last record had em too! in a less a/b way tho

Century Media has put a bunch of their catalog up on Bandcamp. It's being handled by the European side (the prices are in Euro) and seems a little haphazard right now — not every album by every band, but usually just their first 2-3 releases. Presumably more to come. And now I'm listening to old Arch Enemy albums for the first time in forever. Doomsday Machine is a fucking great album.

https://centurymedia.bandcamp.com/music

good god, my late teen years resurrected. thanks for the head's up.

There's a new Doro album out today that includes a cover of "Total Eclipse of the Heart," sung as a duet with Rob Halford.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DguMk2Hze1E

Can't top Bonnie Tyler, but I like it!

dang, body count's "carnivore" is pretty slammin' imho. (didn't make it into the "YES, THAT, NOW" first cartful of century media stuff, now I'm going back through the 20 or so tabs I opened to check out, thanks unperson.)

New Autopsy doesn't hit me as immediately as the last one but it's still quality.

I like this https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-dialogue-with-the-eeriest-sublime

fwiw it's really the final 2 songs that deliver that elusive combo of weird (delicate flute: check; neoclassical more than prog?) thorny, but melodic that push it into "buy" for me

The story at the top of this month's Stereogum metal column is really great. A band whose just slightly too-late sound doomed them to obscurity in the early 90s now achieves success via sync licensing. Good for them.

(Also, in a surprise to me, one of the releases on my label is written up as a bonus at the end of the column!)

which one is yours?