Posted in Whathaveyou on July 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
It was somewhat inevitable, I guess, that Messa would come to the US to tour. They’ve crisscrossed Europe already in support of their 2022 album, Close (review here), and given the broad swath of plaudits that record continues to receive, the demand is legitimately there in a way it isn’t always for bands traveling from Europe for Stateside shows. The US has a reputation as being a more difficult touring sphere than Europe in no small part — long drives, scrounging meals, and so on — but sharing those burdens with co-headliners Maggot Heart should take some of the sting out. And in any case, Messa no doubt have a touring routine down that will be applicable as they go coast-to-coast and hit spots in between.
Only one chance to see them the first time, and this is a band you might just brag about seeing. Dates from socials:
MESSA – US TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT
MAGGOT HEART & MESSA are joining forces for a co-headline coast-2-coast US tour this fall.
Says MESSA: “We’re so thrilled to finally play on the American soil! We will be on the road for three weeks with majestic and brilliant @maggotxheart . We can’t wait to play in the USA and meet all of you!”
Says @maggotheart : “2 albums, one EP and a pandemic later we’re finally coming back to the States. Can’t wait to show what kind of band we’ve turned into, and to share the stage with the great and hardworking MESSA every night”
Presented by @overrun_booking & @swampbooking , the dates are as follows. Tickets on sale NOW!
Oct 17 NYC NY Le Poisson Rouge Oct 18 HAMDEN CT Space Ballroom Oct 19 PHILADELPHIA PA Kung Fu Necktie Oct 20 WASHINGTON DC Comet Ping Pong Oct 21 CLEVELAND OH Beachland Oct 22 CHICAGO IL Empty Bottle Oct 23 YPSILANTI MI Ziggys Oct 24 CINCINNATI OH Woodward Theatre Oct 25 NASHVILLE TN The Cobra Oct 26 ATLANTA GA The Earl Oct 27 ORLANDO FL Will’s Pub Oct 28 MIAMI FL Gramps Oct 30 NEW ORLEANS LA Gasa Gasa Nov 1 DENTON TX Rubber Gloves Nov 2 AUSTIN TX The Lost Well Nov 5 SAN DIEGO CA Brick by Brick Nov 7 SAN FRANCISCO CA Bottom of the Hill Nov 8 LOS ANGELES CA Zebulon
Posted in Whathaveyou on December 6th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
It has not been that long since Italian genrespanners Messa, whose 2022 album, Close (review here), has been another enthusiastically-received notch in their collective belt, were in a van wreck on tour in Europe. That was early October and in addition to needing a new conveyance to get from one show to the next, members of the band required surgery to recover. A not-insignificant event in the life of a band, and something that obviously one hopes any band never has to deal with.
Toward the end of last week, they announced their first time getting back out on the road to continue to support Close in a stream of live dates happening across Jan., Feb. and March. The earliest shows will be in Greece, followed by a run through Germany, France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and (more) Germany. Goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway, best wishes to Messa as they head out again after suffering a genuine trauma. I hope that the crash becomes subsumed by killer memories of the tour to come, and that sooner or later they make their way to American shores. Hard to imagine they haven’t come to the attention of Psycho Las Vegas, if not others besides. We’ll see.
Dates and links and audio follow, as seen on socials:
We’re very happy to announce we’ll be touring Europe again in almost three months!
We will be sharing the stage with opening act @julinko.imago
Below the tour dates. We can’t wait to see you again!
Thu 26.01 GR Athens, Kyttaro Live * Fri 27.01 GR Thessaloniki, Eightball Club * Thu 16.02 DE Karlsruhe, P8 Fri 17.02 DE Berlin, Urban Spree Sat 18.02 DE Bochum, Die Trompete Sun 19.02 FR Paris, Le Petit Bain Tue 21.02 UK London, The Black Heart Wed 22.02 UK Manchester, White Hotel Thu 23.02 UK Preston, The Continental Fri 24.02 UK Liverpool, Quarry Sat 25.02 UK Sheffield, Record Junkee Tue 27.02 BE Antwerp, Kavka Wed 28.02 NL Nijmegen, Merleyn Thu 01.03 NL Utrecht, DB’s Fri 02.03 DE Hannover, Cafè Glocksee Sat 03.03 DE Dresden, Chemiefabrik Sun 04.03 DE Regensburg, Alte Mälzerei
Posted in Whathaveyou on October 3rd, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The good news is everyone came out of it alive. The bad news is that Italian genre-melding rockers Messa were in what looks to have been a pretty serious van crash while on their way home from tour, and members have had to be hospitalized with surgery ordered. Earlier this year, the band released their 2LP third album, Close (review here), through Svart Records to a wash of praise, and they’ve set to work supporting it live ever since.
I don’t know what healthcare is like in Italy, but I assume that like almost everywhere, it’s better than in the US in terms of the financial burden put on the patient. Still, the costs incurred will be significant, from things like physical therapies to Ace bandages — plus from the look of things they’re going to need a new van — so yes, give them your monies. Hell, even if it’s just to lift spirits, a little bit won’t kill you. Once they get over the shock of the thing, they’re going to need all the support they can get.
Their post:
Trigger warning: accident
Yesterday night after the last show of our tour we got in a car crash.
Another driver coming from the opposite direction went straight at us on our lane and impacted with us frontally.
The whole crew is alive, the van is destroyed and some of us will have to undergo surgery. We are okay, but it will take us some months to recover fully. More updates will come soon.
If you want to support us during these hard times, you can buy our records via Bandcamp or donate here to help for everything we’ll have to go through:
We probably won’t be able to answer all of you, but we do appreciate and cherish each and every thought for us.
The relief of hearing the live voices of us all, checking on each other’s state while in the van right after the accident, is something that will not fade away easily.
Much love to you all. To better days, Messa, Otto, Matteo
It’s been a load road, getting from there to here, and here isn’t even there yet if you know what I mean. Alas, Thursday. Day four — 4, IV, I can’t remember how I’ve been writing it out — of the Spring 2022 Quarterly Review, and it’s a doozy. These things are always packed, in fact it’s pretty much the idea, but I still find that even this week as I’m putting out 10 reviews a day — we’ll get to 60 total next Monday — I’m playing catchup with more stuff coming down the pike. It seems more and more like each Quarterly Review I’ve done out of like the last five could’ve been extended a day beyond what it already was.
Alas, Thursday. Overwhelmed? Me too.
Quarterly Review #31-40:
Messa, Close
After two LPs through Aural Music, Italy’s Messa arrive via Svart with a crucial third album in Close. The hype surrounding the record has been significant, and Close earns every bit of it across its 10-song/64-minute run, intricately arranged as the Italian four-piece continue to bridge stylistic gaps with an ease born of expansive songcraft and stunning performance, first from vocalist Sara Bianchin (also percussion) and further from guitarist Alberto Piccolo (also oud, mandolin), bassist/synthesist/vocalist Marco Zanin (also various keys and percussion), and drummer Rocco Toaldo (also harsh vocals, percussion), who together create a complete and encompassing vision of doom that borrows periodically from black metal as anything artsy invariably must, but is more notable for its command of itself. That is, Messa — through the entirety of the hour-plus — are nothing but masterful. There’s an old photo of The Beatles watching Jimi Hendrix circa 1967, seeming resigned at being utterly outclassed by the ‘next thing.’ It’s easy to imagine much of doom looking at Messa the same way.
If what goes around comes around, then don’t be surprised when “Fire & Ice” goes circle-mosh near the end and you get punched in the head. Old. School. Southern. Sludge. Metal. Dudes play it big, and mean, and grooving. Think of turn of the century acts like Alabama Thunderpussy and Beaten Back to Pure, maybe earlier Sourvein, but with a big old lumbering update in sound thanks to a Phillip Cope recording job and a ferocity of its own. They’ve got a pedigree that includes Black Skies, Manticore and Black Hand Throne, and though The Weight of Death is their first long-player, they’ve been a band for seven years and their anti-dogmatic culmination in “Mr. Miserum” feels sincere as only it can coming from the land of the Southern Baptist Church. Aggression pervades throughout, but the band aren’t necessarily monochromatic. Sometimes they’re mad, sometimes they’re pissed off. Watch out when they’re pissed off. And am I wrong for feeling nostalgic listening? Can’t be too soon for them to be retro, right? Either way, they hit it hard and that’s just fine. Everybody needs to blow off steam sometime.
Do I even need to say it, that a band called Dirty Nips offering up a demo called Can O’ Dirty Demo Nipples get up to some pretty cheeky shenanigans therein? I hope not. Still, as the Bristol-via-Poland outfit crunch out the riffs of “The Third Nipple” and harmonica-laced Hank Williams-style country blues on “As I Stumbled” and touch on psychedelic jamming in opener “The Basement” and the later experimental-feeling “Dirty Nips Pt. II,” which just drops to silence in the middle enough to make you wonder if it’s coming back (it is), there’s clearly more going on here than goofball chicanery. “Jechetki” builds on the blues and adds a grunge chug, and closer “Mountain Calling” is — dare I say it? — classy with its blend of acoustic guitar and organ, echoing spoken vocal and engagingly patient realization. They may end up wishing they called themselves something else as time goes on, but as it stands, Dirty Nips‘ demo tape heralds a sonic complexity that makes it that much harder to predict where they might end up, and is all the more satisfying a listen for that.
Though they’re by no means the only band in Sweden to dig into some form of traditionalism in heavy rock, Västerås five-piece Ocean to Burn evoke a decidedly more straight-ahead, Southern-heavy feel throughout the nine songs and 33 minutes of Vultures, their self-released full-length. The throaty grit of vocalist Adam Liifw is a big part of that impression, but in the guitars of Mathilda Haanpää and Fredrik Blomqvist, the tone is more stripped-down than huge-sounding, and the grooves from bassist Pontus Jägervall and drummer Fredrik Hiltunen follow suit. That central purpose suits songs like “Wastelands” and the more strutting “Nay Sayer,” and though they largely stick to their guns style-wise, a bluesier nod on “No Afterlife” early and a breakout in closer “Vulture Road” assure there’s some toying with the balance, even as the tracks all stick to the three- to about four-and-a-half-minute range. They’ve been at it for a while, and seem to revel in the ‘nothin-too-fancy’ attitude of the material, but honestly, they don’t need tricks or novelty to get their point across.
Following an encouraging start in 2019’s Cirrus (review here), Nijmegen instrumentalists Mt. Echo return with the conceptual-feeling Electric Empire, still holding some noise rock crunch in “Automaton” following the opener “Sound & Fury,” but saving its biggest impacts for the angular “50 Fanthoms,” the 10-minute “Flummox” and subsequent “As the Tide Serves,” and on the whole working to bring that side of their approach together with the atmospheric heavy post-rock float of “The End of All Dispute” and the early going of “These Concrete Lungs.” At 10 songs and just under an hour long, Electric Empire has room for world-building, and one of Mt. Echo‘s great strengths is being able to offset patience with urgency and vice versa. By the time they cap with “Torpid,” the trio of Gerben Elburg, Vincent Voogd and Rolf Vonk have worked to further distinguish themselves among their various sans-vocals proggy peers. One hopes they’ll continue on such a path.
Vocalist Eric Brock, guitarist/backing vocalist/principal songwriter Lewis Inglis, bassist Dean Gordon and drummer Ryan Wilson are Edinburgh’s Earl of Hell, and their debut EP, Get Smoked, builds on the brash grooves of prior singles “Arryhthmia” (sic) and “Blood Disco,” the latter of which appears as the penultimate of the six included tracks on the 23-minute outing. More stomp-and-swing than punch-you-in-the-face, “I Am the Chill” nonetheless makes its sense of threat clear — it is not about chilling out — as if opener “Hang ’em High” didn’t. Split into two three-song sides each with a shorter track between, it’s in “Parasite” and “Blood Disco” that the band are at their most punk rock, but as the slower “Bitter Fruits” mellows out in opening side B, there’s more to their approach than just full-sprint shove, though don’t tell that to closer “Kill the Witch,” which revels in its call and response with nary a hesitation as it shifts into Spanish-language lyrics. High-octane, punk-informed heavy rock and roll, no pretense of trying to push boundaries; just ripping it up and threaten to burn ladies alive, as one apparently does.
Released on New Year’s Day after being recorded in Dec. 2021 in the trio’s native Rome, “Yonder” serves as the initial public offering and first single from Slugg, and at 9:59, it is more than a vague teaser for the band they might be. The guitar of Jacopo Cautela and the bass of Stephen Drive bring a marked largesse that nonetheless is able to move when called upon to do so by Andrea Giamberardini‘s drumming, and Cautela‘s corresponding vocals are pushed deeper back in the mix to emphasize those tones. Much of the second half of “Yonder” is given to a single, rolling purpose, but the band cleverly turn that into a build as they move forward, leaving behind the gallops of the first few minutes of the song, but making the transition from one side to another smoothly via midsection crashes and ably setting up the ring-out finish that will draw the song to its close. Not without ambition, “Yonder” crushes with a sense of physical catharsis while affecting an atmosphere that is no less broad. They make it easy to hope for more to come along these lines.
Joe Freedman, also of Banshee, first saw Telepathic Radio released as the debut full-length from Mirage in 2021 through Misophonia Records on tape. There are still a few of them left. That version runs 30 songs and 90 minutes. The Cardinal Fuzz/Centripetal Force edition is 50 minutes/20 tracks, but either way you go, get your head ready for dug-in freakness. Like freakness where you open the artwork file for the digital promo and all three versions are the cover of a Rhapsody album. Ostensibly psychedelic, songs play out like snippets from a wandering attention span, trying this weird thing and seeing it through en route to the next. In this way, Telepathic Radio is both broad-ranging and somewhat contained. The recordings are raw, fade in and out and follow their own paths as though recorded over a stretch of time rather than in one studio burst, which seems indeed to be how they were made. Horns, samples, keys, even some guitar, a bit of “TV Party” and “TV Eye” on “TV Screens,” Mirage howls and wails out there on its private wavelength, resolved to be what it is regardless of what one might expect of it. By the time even the 20-track version is done, the thing you can most expect is to have no clue what just happened in your brain. Rad.
With its first, self-titled release, An Evening Redness basks in morose Americana atmospheres, slow, patient guitar drones, warm bass and steady rhythms giving way to periodically violent surges. Founded perhaps as a pandemic project for Brandon Elkins of Auditor and Iron Forest, the six-song full-length explores the underlying intensity and threat to person and personhood that a lot of American culture just takes for granted. The name and inspiration for the project are literary — ‘An Evening Redness in the West’ is the subtitle of Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 novel, Blood Meridian — and An Evening Redness, even in the long instrumental stretch of 12-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “Alkali,” treats the subject matter with duly textured reverence. Elkins isn’t alone here, and the vocals of Bridget Bellavia on the brooding “Mesa Skyline” and the closing pair of “Pariah” and “Black Flame at the Edge of the Desert,” as well as the contributions of other guests in various locales around the world up to and including Elkins‘ native Chicago should not be downplayed in enriching these explorations of space and sound. Bands like Earth and Across Tundras warrant mention as precursors of the form, but An Evening Redness casts its own light in the droning “Winter, 1847” and the harmonica-wailing “The Judge” enough to be wholly distinct from either in portraying the sometimes horrifying bounty of the land and the cruelty of those living in it.
Brothers John and Marc Beaudette — who if they aren’t twins are close enough — comprise New Hampshire’s Cryptophaser, and XXII is their first demo, pressed in an edition of 50 purple tapes. Dudes might as well just open my wallet. Fair enough. In what’s a show of chemistry and musical conversation that’s obviously been going on longer than these songs — that is, I highly suspect the maybe-twin brothers who drum and play guitar have been playing together more than a year — they bring an adversarial bent to the conventions of heavy fuzz, and do so with the proverbial gusto, breaking away from monolithic tones in favor of sheer dynamic, and when they shift into the drone in “October 83,” they make themselves a completely different band like it isn’t even a thing. Casual kickass. At 13 minutes, it flows like a full-length and has a full-length’s breadth of ideas (some full-lengths, anyway), and the energy from one moment to the next is infectious, be that next part fast, slow, loud, quiet, or whatever else they want it to be.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 18th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
Italian doom mystics Messa will release their new album, Close, on March 11 through Svart Records. It is the label debut for the band who were last heard from with 2018’s Feast for Water (review here) and who would seem to be set to resume the significant momentum of audience building that record and the subsequent road work brought them. The new single “Pilgrim,” feels only suitable in its featuring of ritualized headbanging. I haven’t heard anything else from the record at this point — I wasn’t even cool enough to hear about this; I stumbled on it thumbing through social media — and I guess that’s a complaint in itself, but one thing you won’t hear me griping about is the march Messa lead across the song’s seven minutes.
One of 2021’s most anticipated. Duh.
Preorders are up. The following comes from the Svart store:
Svart Records to release new album by rising stars of eclectic heavy rock, Messa on the 11th of March 2022.
Messa’s rising trajectory hits the stratosphere on their immense new album “Close”. Soaring up out of the Italian Doom Rock underground in 2014, Messa have been rapidly garnering a frenzied throng of devotees, in thrall to their monumental and broad-ranging sound craft. Releasing two widely celebrated cult records, the latest of which “Feast For Water” in 2018 was a critical breakthrough success, Messa have had everyone on tenterhooks, waiting for what was next.
New album “Close” draws us further into Messa’s spellbinding textures and immersive dynamics. Described as “Stevie Nicks fronting Black Sabbath,” singer Sara’s colossal voice omnipotently carries the listener on an emotional rollercoaster ride where the sonic cauldron of Iommi guitars gives way to Arabian oudh and progressive solos in a masterful style-clash that well befits Messa’s incendiary reputation.
The hushed Fender Rhodes piano intro on opener “Suspended,” picks up where Messa left off on their previous album “Feast For Water” but then collapses gloriously into Jazz guitar and widescreen impassioned crushing riffs, lighting our way for the odyssey ahead. The scene is set magnificently for the journey that “Close” expertly takes the listener on, with Messa’s obvious care and passion for the album as a pilgrimage of sonic experience. Heavyweight tracks like “If You Want Her To Be Taken” or “0=2” are modern Doom Rock classics that expertly upgrade and leave the genre reeling in their wake. “Pilgrim” and “Orphalese” are woven with tapestries of Mediterranean sounds where oudh and eastern chord phrasings expand Messa’s cinematic palette with a panache that is all their own. Atmospheric and grandiose belters like “Rubedo” and “Dark Horse” build into an almost limitless climax of discord and harmony where blast beats and saxophones descend into a thrilling cacophony that’s a masterclass in artful cutting edge Doom.
Referencing bands like Dead Can Dance, Swans and Om, Messa have created an album where song, experience and atmosphere are focused into a crystalline modus where high art flawlessly embraces good old fashioned riff-worship. Transcending the occult and noir-tinted atmospheres of their past works, “Close” confidently weaves Messa’s multifarious influences into a singular breath-taking sound that leaves the listener enthralled. Perfection or something extremely close, Messa’s “Close” is not just a Metal record, but it’s definitely one of the best things to break out of the confines of Metal in a long time.
MESSA IS Marco – Guitar, Bass, Ambient Sara – Voice Rocco – Drums, Screams Alberto – Lead Guitar, Rhodes piano
