Written by Sam Imhoff
Mezzanine by Massive Attack is a genre-blending masterpiece of dub-inspired deep bass, complex hip-hop beats, evolving progressive rock elements, and dark, ambient synths. Along with Bonobo, Boards of Canada, and Blockhead, Massive Attack belongs to the genre of trip hop; however, with so many influences and styles, Mezzanine seems to occupy its own unique space, somewhere between early dubstep (not Skrillex, Skream), hip-hop, and IDM.
Though the album received more success in Europe and Australia than in the U.S., you probably recognize the song “Teardrop,” which was the theme for the television series House. Rest assured the other tracks are less conventional, and the album is fire.
Listening gives you the impression that you’re wading through a seedy European nightclub, with acid freaks dosing at midnight and ketamine addicts snorting up in the bathroom. It’s a dark, ugly place, and yet you refuse to leave.
“Angel” starts the album off with a tight bassline and drumbeat that evolves and distorts as Robert Del Naja, a founder of the band, sings about a beautiful angel who will destroy him.
Though not my favorite, the track is a perfect starting gun that brings the energy from zero to one hundred. Wolves howling followed by a sexy bassline start the next track, “Risingson,” a personal favorite. A crackling drumbeat with sizzling hi-hats erupts over the booming bass as Del Naja whispers the desperate, druggy scene in Bristol Clubs to life.
There’s a break between verses with ambient synths panning, then Daddy G, another founder of the band, sings throatily,
Why you want to take me to this party and breathe /
I’m dying to leave…/
Automatic crystal remote control /
They come to move your soul /
The lyrics, while at times obscure and poetic to a fault, are nonetheless provocative and alluring. Risingson seems to be about drugs, lust, clubbing, and the guilt and paranoia associated.
Skipping over “Teardrop,” a good but unremarkable track, “Inertia Creeps” starts with an ominous near-eastern guitar riff as the drums creep to a bass-heavy war march, the toms reverberating loudly through your ears.
The Middle-Eastern influences and stomping beat are a stark contrast to the sound you’d expect in a song about sex, and yet it works perfectly with Del Naja’s lyrics about the emptiness and egotism of casual, drugged sex. It’s a great add to your sex playlist if dark vibes are your thing.
Next, “Dissolved Girl” is a haunting and gorgeous track. Sarah Jay, the featured singer, offers a female perspective to the relationship developed in “Inertia Creeps.” Over a hip-hop beat that builds to a distorted break down, the lyrics describe being unable to leave a parasitic relationship for overwhelming lust.
The refrain echoes: “I need a little love to ease the pain.” It’s refreshing to listen to an album that doesn’t glorify the casual sex, experimental drug usage, and partying so prevalent of our time (the album was released in 1998, but the lyrics could’ve been written yesterday), but it doesn’t only condemn either. The highs and lows are explored lyrically and musically, like the roller-coaster life of a drug addict. The song feeds into “Man Next Door,” the only song I dislike on the album for its whiney vocals and repetitive lyrics.
“Black Milk” is a somber, mellow track to contrast much of the distorted chaos of the album. Smooth female vocals float over a simple hip hop beat, and the biblical language and long reverberations of panning pianos give it the feeling of a trip hop requiem.
In this obscure song about motherhood, what is mourned perhaps is the absence of a wholesome father, lost to drugs and egotism, the alluring vices explored in previous tracks.
The energy picks back up with “Mezzanine,” the second to last on the album.
It’s a grimy, muted song that bounds forward with a smooth, thumping bass. “Mezzanine,” being the floor between the first and second, is a metaphor for the feeling of in-between, a weird transitional space, according to Del Naja.
To me, the song feels like the descent from the ride of the album, leaving only the conclusion.
The final track, “Group Four,” is the longest, and perhaps the darkest. It explores the freedoms and limitations of the life of a night-shift security guard.
While the solitude of his life is isolating, it also frees him to explore the sleeping world- an interiorized world that affords meaningless connections of highs and lust but is nonetheless magical.
The song is a perfect thematic conclusion to an album about drug abuse, sex and passion without love, and a partying underworld.
There’s a euphoria in the high, but if you spend enough time there you won’t make it to first floor-connected sobriety. You’ll be stuck on the mezzanine.