Messa - The Spin (2025)^{Release ID: 58900}

Messa's previous album, 2022's "Close" was my AOTY for that year and is one of my favourite albums of the current decade. So expectations were high for their new full-length and while it would be going too far to say I was disappointed with it, initially it fell a little bit short of my undoubtedly unrealistic expectations. Now that I have had some time to really get to grips with it my early lukewarm reaction feels a bit reactionary because "The Spin" has grown on me massively and, whilst not yet quite up there with "Close", it has still proven itself to be a damn fine record.

Leaning more into gothic territory than previously, "The Spin" is not as heavy or doomy as "Close" and is more hook-driven than the earlier album, but the interweaving of various non-metal influences is still present. Whilst undoubtedly an entire band effort, I felt that vocalist Sara Bianchin was the star of "Close", but here I think the big draw is Alberto Piccolo's fantastic guitar work. He unleashes several scintillating solos with "Immolation" and "Void Meridian" being particularly sterling examples, his riffing is spot on and his jangling guitar work is so reminiscent of the 1980's UK gothic rock scene that you would swear that Billy Duffy or Wayne Hussey had guested on the album. Piccolo also plays blues rock under the name "Little Albert" and his slide work on penultimate track "Reveal" suggests he is also proficient in that scene too.

There does seem to be a specific direction of travel to "The Spin". It begins with the emphasis very much on the gothic, specifically the opening brace of "Void Meridian" and "At Races" and the album feels as much about gothic rock as metal, with "Void Meridian" coming on like Siouxsie and the Banshees - tell me the opening bass line doesn't sound like the beginning of "Spellbound"! As the album progresses, though, it starts to move in a heavier direction, culminating with the one-two combo of the album's out and out heaviest track, "The Reveal" and the doomy "Thicker Blood". Along the way though we are treated to tracks that include the band's trademark dalliances with other diverse elements such as blues and jazz, meaning we are never going to get bored or complacent about where the band are going. They even reference Rush and in particular "La Villa Strangiato" from 1978's "Hemispheres" during the album's epic centrepiece, "The Dress" whilst the first half of "Immolation" is a piano ballad that Tori Amos would be proud of.

I sometimes get the feeling with some primarily metal artists who often look to incorporate a lot of non-metal elements that they are almost embarrassed to be tagged as metal, but I never feel that with Messa and despite their eclecticism they feel like a band who revel in their metal roots, even whilst it isn't the totality of their playbook. Sure, I am generally a bit of a caveman when it comes to metal. I love cavernous, old-school death metal, frigid and raw blasting black metal, crawling and monolithic doom, chugging thrash riffs and anthemic, singalong-at-the-top-of-your-voice classic metal choruses, but I am not a complete philistine and I am perfectly capable of enjoying bands who want to bring more to the table. I just prefer when they do it in a listenable way rather than making their albums into a test of the listener's endurance for discomfort. Thankfully, listenability is still an important quality to Messa and their eclecticism is not at the expense of accessibility. "The Spin" may not be an album that initially grabs the average metalhead by the throat, but it does reward those who spend time with it and ultimately reveals itself to be the product of a band who are eminently skillful musicians and songwriters that, despite weaving their metal with influences from bygone days, still produce exceedingly modern-sounding metal.