The Spin

The Italian quartet Messa have leapt from strength to strength with each release, just as they’ve bounced from label to label; their 2016 debut, Belfry, and 2018’s Feast For Water were on Aural Music, 2022’s Close and 2023’s Live At Roadburn (with three additional musicians) were on Svart, and now they’re in the big leagues, having signed with Metal Blade. Their previous releases offered plenty of unexpected sounds, from the clarinet and saxophone solos on “Blood” from Belfry to the electric piano and jazz guitar heard on Feast and Close. They’ve always been good, but The Spin offers some of their best work to date. Their songs have a newfound concision, thanks to a general shift from the jazzy doom metal of previous records (yes, you can do both at once; check out Black Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan” sometime) to an occult rock sound tinged with synthwave keyboards. Some songs (“Fire On The Roof,” “The Dress,” “Reveal”) are heavy, but “Immolation” is a genuinely beautiful ballad, and even “The Dress” shifts from grandiose metal to moody jazz, with some fantastic trumpet-guitar interplay over a thick synth bass line. Vocalist Sara Bianchin soars above the crunching guitar riffs, and she wails with a Siouxsie-like intensity on the gothier tracks. Lead guitarist Alberto Piccolo delivers some epic solos, and bassist Marco Zanin and drummer Rocco Toaldo are a precise, but swinging, rhythm section.