Messa – The Spin Review

[cover artwork by Nico Vascellari]

Every artist worth a speck is destined to release at least one “divisive” record – you’ve heard a few in your day, I’m sure. The heavy-heeled stagger into stuffy acoustic foof, the grizzled vets discovering “synthetic keyboards” for the first time, and my personal favorite – And Justice For All. Like Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0, each artistic statement is a duality: an installation allowed to be both loved and punished by its consumer as well as exist as a self-contained act of personal expression, singular and ironclad. The greats soldier on and grow (or wane, depending) through each iteration, and despite the average listener’s patent lack of medical training it is still, broadly, up to the audience to decide whether said growth is benign or malignant. So hey, you get the biopsy results on The Spin yet? A few paragraphs down, you say? Tease.

For nearly a decade Italy’s Messa have been conjuring their spare and smoky brand of doom. Belfry set the scene*, and each successive album has been adjusting the focus, tweaking the coloration and moving the light sources around on that same scene to achieve whatever dramatic effect by which they’ve been presently bewitched. To be a might less insufferable – there is a velveteen core to Messa’s sound that has been there from the jump. Songs unfold in such a way as to sound both improvisatory and strictly mapped. Massive guitar parts strut, crush and are embraced by warm, exotic tones like the occasional horn, a somber Rhodes piano, the distant tolling of an obscure percussive instrument. This is a golem of doom inhabited by an empathetic soul, cinematic in scope and extremely human in presentation.

Yes, loyal readers, it is admittedly difficult for me to be impartial about Messa. They scratch the same meandering, fetid rut in my brain that David Lynch does. So why the cryptic preamble? Think of it this way – would the same Hollywood mediumwigs who fattened their wallets off of Twin Peaks have agreed to financing Lost Highway had they an inkling of how deep the rabbit hole was going to go?  They were aware of the precedent, sure, but a monochromatic Robert Blake? Not in MY picture, son.

Pictured: Hollywood mediumwig

The Spin is Messa’s Lost Highway, a stylized spin on previously established themes, unique in presentation but sharing the same neon blue blood. Close was heavy on the ancient, sepulchral dust; The Spin is a sharp intake of Vespa fumes, pushing the needle down a dimly lit Roman side street, edging the accelerator a little too hard at the tee. The reverb has been dialed up, the pace is generally quickened, the 80’s electrogoth warpaint is applied. Those expecting another 60+ minutes of mostly marching but occasionally rocking doom must be warned – this ain’t it. A newly found sense of moribund fun has been injected, at least musically. Curate your cochleas with “At Races”, linked below, and try not to nod your sad, sad head.

You have a good time there, boss? I know. I KNOW. That’s one of the keys with The Spin. Unlike their previous three – which are varying degrees of great themselves – this one is ready and willing to lean into disarmingly charming vibes. Album opener “Void Meridian” begins with an unsteady synth throb but gradually settles into, by doom standards, an addictive tachycardia. The verses, masterfully conducted by Sara and taking up over HALF the track length, segue effortlessly into a plaintive choir chorus and further on into a bloody solo before concluding with a repeated chorus. Whilst hearing this track for the third or fourth time I finally understood what was being offered; Messa are realizing the potential of their constituent pieces. Lead guitarist Alberto has always had the feel of a doomslinger with a closet love of jazz and blues. Sara has always been the moodring, coloring the proceedings to her whim. The rhythm section has always swung heavy, hands low, chin exposed and teeth bared. Together, they have spent three previous albums showing us their chops through one compositional trick or another: adding in new timbres, varying tempos and highlighting key players, but until now it has all felt in service of an experiment (decreasingly so, admittedly). The Spin is the abstract – the presentation of the experiment’s findings neatly packaged into one tight paragraph.

“Fire on the Roof’ is the track to mainline if you’re interested in a succinct and ripping representation of the Messa of 2025. THIS is the song that most represents their new direction intertwined with the strengths of old. Like “Void Meridian”, “Fire on the Roof” cruises atop a juicy synth ripple, making way for verbed-out clean guitar and a beckoning vocal. The chorus hits with a massive riff, one of those Close-esque numbers with little arpeggiations and pull-offs, most likely born out of an extra rad jam session. The entire track is abuzz with energy, all the way until the end when Mistyr throttles his kit into exhaustion. I mean, at heart it’s a pop tune – intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/oh shit an extra verse/chorus/outro. If you had told me in 2023, a sweet sweet boy of 34, that in a couple years Messa would wallop me with a little jingle I’d have said “Sir, I was not put on this earth to trifle about, and do you not have more hobbies than predicting niche doom bands’ flights of fancy?”

Sorry, sorry. This review has been sorely lacking in meat and/or potatoes. You want protein AND starch? Listen to “The Dress”.

My god, man, what else could you want?  In fact, “The Dress” is the song most of you Mr. Messters should listen to first, honestly. The ratio of familiar to new is maybe 60/40 this time, and like an uncalled-for ground beef blend, it sizzles tremendously and just might make you grease your drawers. Built around an insistent riff that buoys the chorus and acts as the impassioned drive behind the enormous conclusion, “The Dress” is ultimately a dramatic exercise in sensitivity. In past Messa records, dynamics were a key component of the delivery, not necessarily the composition. If the band wanted to be quiet, they played quietly. The nature of The Spin‘s choice of aesthetic does not lend itself as easily to dynamic performances given the emphasis on electronic and otherwise inorganic textures. Hence, in this case the dynamic variation is instead written into the structure of the song. The peaks and valleys of the chorus to the verse, the relative lull of the solo section and the electric rage of the conclusion. You may not like it**, but this is what peak Messa performance looks like.

My favorite section of music this year so far is approximately the last three minutes of concluding track “Thicker Blood”. In the interest of not spoiling your fun I shan’t be too revealing, but it is a passage quite ponderous, maybe even a Pass’ Dog Ponderous. That is not a slight – The Spin in all its previous minutes is continually exciting. The album ends on a simple inhale/exhale pattern, thoughtful and serene, with an undercurrent of simmering power. In spirit I can’t help but think of the final minutes of “The Last Journey of Ringhorn” from Blut Aus Nord’s legendary Ultima Thule. Of course, in 7 days you’ll see there are other reasons I might make that comparison…

Time will tell, as it always does, if Close has truly been usurped, but at this very moment my heart believes The Spin to be Messa’s magnum opus. They have somehow adopted a lingua franca between their past and probable future selves, creating a sound that harmonizes with the elder parishioners while charting the chord changes ahead of the hymnal. Unexpected news can be one of life’s great joys or cruelest punishments. In that spirit I can delightedly tell you that this growth is benign.

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-The light in the window has been suffused with blue, strobing into the room from the black of night. The bed is gone. The chest is open and its contents have been arranged around the rug in the center of the room: a few candles, a WWII-era bayonet, an antique ashtray befit with still languidly smoking butts. Someone sits at the chair in the corner, out of focus, and you do not know if they are friend or foe.-

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*approximation of imagined scene shown below (Edgar Allen Poe’s dorm room)

**any claims of “you not liking it” have not been evaluated by a doctor and cannot legally be interpreted as factual statements, let alone good faith analytics by a supposedly informed third party.

Posted by Isaac Hams

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