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Italy's Messa, a
female-fronted doom-metal band consisting of
guitarist Alberto Piccolo (also on piano),
bassist Marco "Sade" Zanin, vocalist Sara Bianchin and drummer Rocco "Mistyr" Toaldo, debuted with the discreet Belfry (2016), which mainly highlighted
their ability to incorporate melodic guitar solos in their lugubrious doom
and the vocalist's piercing power.
Feast for Water (2018) expanded all their original elements, especially
the keyboard-tinged noir-jazz (She Knows) and
the solemn psychedelic dilation
(Tulsi but with a coda of yearning Pink Floyd-ian sax solo).
Combining the two, their doom-metal felt closer to
Bohren & der Club of Gore
than to Candlemass and the likes.
Sara Bianchin's versatile vocals shine especially in the
operatic Grace Slick-esque crooning of Leah (a piece that harkens back to the melancholy prog-rock of early Deep Purple)
and in the bluesy shamanic howling of The Seer (intentionally or not, the power-trio evokes Janis Joplin's Big Brother band with just a bit more Hendrix-ian noise).
Their jazz-metal hybrid was less convincing on
Close (2022).
Sometimes trivial (the Middle-eastern prog-rock of Orphalese,
the folkish ballad If You Want Her to Be Taken),
sometimes disjointed
(Suspended wastes both Bianchin's voice and Piccolo's guitar)
and sometimes plain
filler (the tedious Dark Horse, the erratic and inconclusive
0=2, a ten-minute juggernaut),
the album is
rarely cohesive: Rubedo, Bianchin's most Slick-ian vocal flight;
Serving Him, the melodic peak;
and the nine-minute Pilgrim, an evil twist on the acid ragas of the 1960s (but lasts two minutes too many).
Not much doom is left: this is closer to pop-metal than it looks.
(Copyright © 2021 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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