The Mass - City Of Dis
Crucial Blast

file under different metal

Niels: After one calm guitar chord The Mass immediately shows that they have quite a typical sound. Lots of hoempa drums, odd rhythms, swinging and screaming saxophone parts, crunchy vocals etc. The music is really diverse and quite unusual. Especially the sax parts are remarkably great. Most of the time I don’t dig it when people use saxes in their rock/metal, but The Mass manages to make the melodies one with the music. It is not a gimmick, it really ads something to the music. ‘Trapped Under Ice’, for instance, contains great polyrhythmic guitar parts. The sax gives them a nice cartoonesque touch. Really beautiful.

The recordings sound really direct and honest. They sound like not much mixing and mastering had to be done. The musicians seem to be well trained in playing together and work themselves through a wide variety of weird breaks. From easy jazz (‘Major Strip’) to brutal metal (‘Hex Hex’) it all works for them. Although there are traces of metal in the songs (‘Hex Hex’ contains a solid Slayer riff for instance) the music can’s be labelled as such. Independent and postpunk do describe it a bit better. Fans of Jorn Zorn, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, Frank Zappa and The Dillinger Escape Plan should really go out to a specialised record store and listen to this album.

Rating: 85/100 (details)

http://www.themass.us