Messa – The Spin
It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the 1980s in terms of how the decade shaped metal music. Though at no point in time prior has there been the kind of abundance in easy-to-find metal as there is now, from mainstream and indie metal groups to Bandcamp blackgazers and djent-it-yourselfers, the river from which all metal flows has its source in the ’80s. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal, speed and thrash metal, the birth of death metal and grindcore, black metal and sludge metal’s earliest recorded works—it all happened in a pre-internet era, concurrent with punk’s evolution into hardcore and, on a different tack, post-punk.
That latter point is crucial in taking into account the time-traveling Messa did for their fourth album The Spin—and I’m not even necessarily referring to the 500-year-old villa in which parts of the album were recorded. The eclectic Italian doom metal group sought inspiration from the 1980s when writing the songs that comprise The Spin, though only a small part of that rich well of influences includes metal bands. Though Messa cite Mercyful Fate as one of the guiding forces behind the album, there’s an even more significant impression made by the likes of goth and post-punk groups such as Killing Joke, The Sound, The Sisters of Mercy and The Virgin Prunes, per their own cited listening log. That resplendent gothic cloak shimmers from the opening notes of first track “Void Meridian,” a gorgeously sinister invitation into Messa’s intoxicating underworld that brings their undercurrent of doom into the streamlined post-punk gloom of early ’80s imports like Xmal Deutschland.
That The Spin treads so far afield from metal’s most recognizable tropes isn’t necessarily new for Messa; their 2022 album Close blended doom with prog-rock and jazz, and its predecessor drew even more explicitly from Badalamenti and Bohren and der Club of Gore-style noir dirges. Yet with The Spin, the group embrace pop—at least as The Cocteau Twins or Siouxsie might define it—to a much more pronounced degree. Yet even within the immediacy of the deathrock romanticism of “At Races,” there’s a spacey prog-rock midsection, veering out to ambient cosmic terrain before thrusting into overdrive with a heroic guitar solo. And with “Fire on the Roof,” pulsing synthesizers drive the momentum of the song as much as its urgent post-punk rhythms or the stadium metal riffs in its chorus, merging the new wave in their headphones with the heavy metal in their blood.
As their first album to be released through Metal Blade, The Spin can be viewed as a leveling up of sorts—both commercially, as evident through the hooks in their satisfyingly soaring goth-metal songs, as well as via the progression of their ambition. “Immolation” is, for all intents and purposes, a power ballad, swelling from subdued melancholy into an eruption of bombast and slide guitar. But even when drawing from a familiar trope, Messa opt for 4AD-style shimmer over thorny roses and winds of change, vocalist Sara Bianchin even expressing a vocal range that evokes Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser. “The Dress,” which was released as a single despite the sheer scope of it, never quite signals where it’s going, initially a gothic dirge erupting with ’80s glam metal overtures—until it, with little warning, takes a detour into jazz fusion, complete with a spectacular trumpet solo from Michele Tedesco and finally exploding into a furious black metal climax and incredible guitar solo from Alberto Piccolo.
As songs like “The Dress” make clear, The Spin isn’t necessarily a reflection of the ’80s as you might remember it, if you were there, or as pre-packaged nostalgia often presents it, if you weren’t. Such an exercise would be too pedestrian for a band like Messa, whose glimpse into the past results in one of the best metal albums of the year–one that recognizes the benefits of a fishnets-and-battle-vests alliance. Maybe it’s not the kind of album you’d imagine blasting during a playthrough of Galaga or cruising to the mall, but the go-for-broke grandeur of it all can stand up to the best of the decade’s greats.
Label: Metal Blade
Year: 2025
Similar Albums:
Messa : The Spin
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
