Review Summary: 'After the call comes the diving deep – Waters aim through sonic measure.'
Back in 2016 progressive doom-metal group
Messa released their debut album
Belfry: a unique take on the doom-metal style, featuring beautifully soaring, entrancing singing from vocalist Sara, fuzzy, bluesy guitars, a droning atmosphere and jazzy instrumentation with the addition of a saxophone on several tracks, all combined with some classic occult doom-metal elements ala
Bellwitch or
Pentagram. Now we have here their follow-up to that intriguing debut,
Feast for Water, in which Messa expands upon their densely melancholic sound in spectacular fashion. For it is with this sophomore effort that Messa has gone full dark-ambience, vastly bettered their song-writing abilities and dialled up both the poignancy and atmosphere to 100. A sound the band themselves defines as ‘Scarlet Doom’.
This album’s sound and atmosphere are both intensely engrossing and poignantly sorrowful. It creates this strange, spine-tingling sensation, of being immersed in an endless sea of dolorous sounds as you slowly peregrinate through the album’s soundscapes. The colour-palate of this musical ocean appears chromatically homogenous, but in reality contains a far more varied display of pigments, some representing a deep mournfulness or despair, some a sense of relief or profound catharsis. Nevertheless, the atmosphere on
Feast… is perpetually doused in this deep darkness which remains ever-present throughout the album. The song structures perfectly serve to amplify these emotional elements. Similar to the debut, the songs are extensive and meander constantly. Yet compositionally speaking, this album feels more dynamic and immediate: lumbering, almost traipsing builds will suddenly transition into flurrying, bluesy solos or soaring, sometimes awfully dissonant crescendos (see tracks 3 & 4). This makes the emotional vacillations on this record all the more apparent. As an ocean, the songs on
Feast… ebb and flow continually, from the serene interludes to the immensely powerful vocals to the earthshattering apotheoses; tempos permutate, moods and atmospheres alter and emotional undertones shift continually.
Speaking of vocals, they are indisputably one of the most important and powerful aspects of Messa’s music. Vocalist Sara is a highly talented singer and she delivers some truly astonishing performances on this record. She has this unique, angelic, soaring voice which can both sing you into a deep slumber or make you completely inconsolable. Her amazing range and tone perfectly capture the mood this album is attempting to encapsulate and always seem remarkably apposite in their accompaniment of the musical stadium a song might find itself in. Whether she is releasing these incredibly heartrending bawls during the crescendo moment on ‘She Knows’, providing these lovely soothing vocal melodies on ‘White Stains’ or discharging powerful chants during the trudging rhythm on ‘Tulsi’, I’m always listening in awe as her vocalizations pull at my heartstrings with startling efficacy. Still, these are just a few highlight among many and my descriptions could never do Sara’s performances on this record justice; her vocals must be experienced first-hand for their prowess and emotional impact to be understood fully.
Additionally, the instrumentation on this record is certainly worthy of praise. Both the guitar tone and guitar playing on this album are excellent. The riffs are can be slow, fuzzy and forcefully heavy or pleasantly melodic, appropriately complementing the album’s mood and atmosphere. Their tone can also be remarkably bluesy throughout the record, especially during the various striking solos on this album. What they do best however, is capture the emotional frame of mind of the album as their strings judiciously quiver along while the record seamlessly drifts through its many musical avenues. They can sound canorously tranquil or massively hammering, depending on the emotional attitude required, perfectly complementing both the temperament of Sara’s vocals and album’s compositional changes. The fuzzy, distorted base and the pummelling drums easily keep up and happily play along with this musical adventure. As with their last record, Messa also do not shy away from adding a little instrumental variation here and there. Both the opening interlude track and the ending track feature some lovely string work and the final tracks also contain some rather outstanding and eminently fitting saxophone work. Furthermore, a rhodes piano is used sporadically yet effectively throughout the record, further adding to the lush and diverse instrumentation already present.
The production is very befitting of the record as a whole. It isn’t so overly polished, as to completely detract from the album’s soulfulness. Instead, it’s dense, raw and remarkably spacey, giving the record this amazing feeling of gargantuan vastness. The instruments sound aptly raw and unvarnished, the drums pounding and hollow, the vocals clear and overarching, yet they do not completely drown out the instrumentation. This allows
Messa to craft the immense sound that produces the all-encompassing, oceanic atmosphere which makes this album so superb. The music becomes analogous to this massive pelagic black hole, which sucks you in and doesn’t abstain from enveloping you until the final sounds on this record slowly subside. I’ve listened to this album countless times and the experience is always equally rewarding and emotionally enjoyable. Moreover,
Feast… never seems to become stale or repetitive, due to its dynamic compositional structures and remarkable instrumental variety.
On top of all of this, the record is anything but conceptually uninteresting, as it is a concept record which adequately manages to tie together its overall musical feel and conceptual themes. To quote the band themselves: “
Feast for Water is a concept album centered on the introspective, symbolic and ritual features of the liquid element.” See, all of the aquatic terminology in this review was not just used for purely aesthetic aims. And, as far as I’m concerned, this album fairly accurately expresses these conceptual aspirations. Much like the contents of an ocean, the music found on this album can be both quietly serene or vociferously chaotic, slowly drifting or flowing quickly, bottomless and vacuous or solid and concentrated. The lyrics themselves are fairly abstract yet do have a profoundly poetic quality to them. Take for example the opening lyrics to ‘She Knows’, which showcase this rather suitably:
“
She Knows
How to crack up your ego
How profound
Can be the tremble
She knows
The perfume, the depth of your heart
Your laments and all your odes”
The eloquence with which the lyrics on this record have been construed is not fully encapsulated by the quote above however: a quick glance at the rest of the lyrical content of this album will reveal a profuse amount of well-written libretto.
Ultimately,
Messa have created an absolutely superb concept album with fabulously textured, cohesive and dynamic compositions, fantastically diverse and intricate instrumentation, an absolutely engulfing atmosphere and a prodigiously rousing poignancy.
Messa, I tip my hat to thee with unquestioning reverence and wish you the best of luck on your musical journey. I, for one, cannot wait to see what you’ll bring us next!
