Tag: progressive

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Messa – The Spin

It’s dark like gothic but not black metal or post-punk goth, it’s well-crafted musically but not over the top progressive metal, it’s slow in tempo but not at all doom or sludge. I was a bit confused when they listed things like jazz and dark ambient in their influences, and then, the track The Dress goes into a full-on jazz depart before jumping into a cinematic transition and ending up with a fantastic solo and then the crystal clear vocals arrive… They really have it all. Still, it’s not a mish-mash of things but a perfect amalgamation and genre-bending.

Overall, Messa is just one of those most eclectic dark rock bands that put the sweetest sorrow in my throat. And The Spin is a beautiful album, gives me shivers over and over again. I can easily listen to this on repeat.

Update: I’ve just listened to the previous albums of Messa and now it’s clear why they mention stuff like drone, dark ambient, doom, or stoner as references for their music. There are actual full tracks with these aesthetics on earlier records. However, I think The Spin is a lot more evolved and cleaner version of their sound. It’s not so much all these styles living side-by-side anymore but having a great blend of these sources into one coherent voice.

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The Ocean – Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic

It has a post-rock atmosphere with prog-rock elements but a metal sound. Apparently this is post-metal or prog-metal, which I’m not too familiar with as a genre, probably should be. But then again I guess Tool could fall in this category, too, I’ve just never thought of them this way. And thinking about it this way I ralize the difference between post-metal and prog-metal. Tool is more on the prock-metal side essentially coming from a prog-rock/art-rock angle just adding more metal weight to instrumentation. While The Ocean is more heavy on the post-rock vibe with epic instrumental spaces where massive and rhythm-heavy riffs bridge calm and sorrow melodic sections.

In any case, this is a fantastic record, takes me on a journey, and I definitely want to follow it up with its successor Phanerozoic II right away.

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Tool – Fear Inoculum

I need to put this out here so that I can move on with my Play Later playlist. Probably I rather want to listen to it a hundred more times than say too much about it.

My short summary is that Tool’s journey can be heard on this one again, like through each one of their records. Again, it’s more refined, more nuanced, and more soft. This also means that it’s less raw, less surprising, and less revolting. Some Tool fans are not satisfied with this journey, and I’m not one of those fans. I like everything about it, I like what their music has become. My only concern is that with Maynard’s works in other areas of life I cannot help thinking whether his full soul is still in this project, or it’s just something that he gave in to and tried to accomplish to the best of his efforts. However, I have no doubt that they did everything as good as they humanly could to accomplish this record.

The music is not something I could describe with words like great, wonderful, or such. It works on a very different level and scale. I love that there are the most number of 10+ minute songs so far, and I love the path all those take from beginning to end. I’m meh for the short filler pieces, but the arcs of the epic ones blow me away, those are the ones why I have this album on constant replay for a week now.

On another note, I just realized that each Tool album represents a completely different stage in my life. This is also probably why I will always like their latest album the best. The music part is not something that’s up for debate, I know that their work will always resonate with me. It’s just what I add and how I connect to it.