As the sun streams through the all-be-it, very dirty glass doors, that act as my portal to the outside world, all seems well with the world, despite the presence of a global pandemic, a despotic lunatic launching a war on innocent men, women and children in Ukraine and a niggling problem with my guttering that needs fixing (not a metaphor). Aside from that all seems well with the world and my tenuous place within it. A stark contrast to the last time I was very kindly offered the opportunity to evacuate the bowels of my opinion onto the glossy, blood smeared pages of this esteemed site where a darkened mood, was further exacerbated by a band that decided that the dramatization of a backwoodsman raping a woman would prove to be a suitable truck and trailer, to their piss poor and risible attempts at music. Of course, the band were wrong on all counts. And so, with palette cleansed, it’s time to move onto less sexually violent and misogynistic territories with Italian ‘doom’ mongers Messa.
To be truthful, I hadn’t heard of this band before and so as any diligent reviewer does, went and checked out the usual socials to get a feel for the band whilst their third full length effort ‘Close’ dripped into my earholes as I watched our cat desperately try to catch pigeons in the garden. It seems I may have been late to the Messa party, when a cursory cruise around the Interweb, seems to be full of glowing reviews and hyperbolic grandstanding with proclamations of genius thrown around like second rate confetti at a Southend based wedding in June. This always makes my arse twitch like a shitting dog, and immediately sets my bullshit radar all a quiver with my critical blaster set for dripping sarcasm and feint praise. But all things considered, I needn’t have worried because after a few listens, this is a rich, balanced and intriguing body of work that whilst it may register low on the heavy end of the scale, its hidden depth and grand scale of its influences, are enough to allow it to pass through the rotted carcasses that pass for the ambulatory of Ave Noctum’s citadel.
Although suffering a surfeit of heavier moments, there are times where the riffs pile on like a fine rain, accumulating into a dense blanket of watery misery none more so than on album midpoint ‘Pilgrim’ which grinds about like a teenager on Ketamine, as the low end does it’s doomy Sabbath thing (and dare I say it with a soupcon of BM influence galloping tangentially at odds with other more jazz infused interludes) as the guitars soar into a solo that literally would (if it were made of chocolate) eat itself. But it’s all in service of one thing and that’s what anchors the band, the music, the image, their whole existence, is predicated on the vocals of the mysteriously frontwomen Sara. You can well imagine (and the band wouldn’t disagree) when this band was formed, it coalesced around her vocal abilities and style, where it didn’t really matter about the rest of the band. Go play my friends, go lay some meandering rock riffs down, do what you like, as long as it’s all laying down a bed of genuflecting chords, in service to the vocals.
Again, this sounds like this album/band is ripe for the slurry tank, but it can’t be ignored that the slightly heavier Evanescence/Nightwish (apologies for the female fronted metal bands adverbials) stylings of this band are simply not giving Sara enough credit. Their Italian heritage shines through in the use of folksy, middle eastern soundings influences, with quasi-religious chanting and lush epic soundscapes, evocative of the soundtrack to the film 300, (without all the sword stabbing face moments). It’s gorgeously sumptuous, big and warm. The vocals are simpering, powerful, lush, delicate, ethereal and demanding. The vocals are the secret sauce, the missing weapons of mass destruction and they simply propel what would have been, on the face of it, slightly dull, vanilla, middle of the road, doom rock vignettes that no sooner have they finished, then they’ve evaporated into a small cloud of dense mist, like a seventy-three-year-old grandad after three pale ales and a roast chicken dinner. A brown soup of gravy and farts. But such is the vocal prowess of Sara, that she raises everything up by 79 percentage and thus elevates these songs into something far more enjoyable.
Look, this album isn’t going to change your life, but it’s been some time since the vocals (which are never my first port of call when it comes to the ranking of importance from a musicality perspective personally) have had such a propulsive effect on a body of work, such is the unwavering confidence, strength and dynamism of the vocals on display. I really want to simply dismiss this album as a boring, staid bunch of wee, but I can’t and as a result I will offer ‘Close’ and them band themselves, a cautious, but well deserved, thumbs up.
(7/10 Nick Griffiths)
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