Mass: weave dark atmospheres to overcome the boundaries
From the encounter between weight and melody, darkness and vision, it was born the sound language of Mass, which they themselves baptized over ten years ago with the term “Scarlet Doom”. A plot of jazz, doom, ambient, black metal, post-rock and blueswoven with millimeter precision and free spirit: it is an expressive code that does not seek stylistic shelters but crosses frontiers, between harmonic stratifications, unexpected dynamics, thoughts thought. The original formation of Bassano del Grappa, now pushes its musical language over new borders with the album “The Spin“, Outgoing tomorrow, April 11, for the historic Metal Blade Records.
“We are very curious to see how this new work will be perceived,” Sara Bianchin, the group of the group, tells Rockol, in connection via Zoom with his companions. In view of the release of the disc, he adds: “And we are curious to see how the public will react, even live. We will present the album on April 18th at Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, in the Netherlands, and on April 26 to Argo16in Venice. We are happy, there is also that squeeze positive“.
“The spin”
The mass are Alberto Piccolo (guitar), Marco Zanin (bass), Rocco Toaldo (drums), Sara Bianchin (voice): born in 2014, they traced a personal trajectory with “Belfry” (2016), “Feast for Water” (2018) and “Close” (2022), bringing their narrative from underground contexts of the independent scene up to international stages throughout Europe And beyond, as at the Roadburn Festival, from which the 2023 live album was born.
“The first songs written for the new album date back to two years ago. Although we still didn’t know they would end up in this album, “explains Alberto:” The real idea for this project was born when we understood that We wanted to make a record that played a little eighties The first pieces were written in a phase in which we still sailed in unknown waters and were therefore rearranged for ‘The Spin’.
Most of the songs were then written last summer. We closed ourselves a little in the rehearsal room all together to collect ideas. “Unlike the previous tests on the long distance, so the band has always tried to have” a more live approach for the recording of the discs “, the Mass,.“The Spin” was “recorded in separate tracks”. “We tried to do something different that we had not yet tried,” underlines the guitarist, who echoes Marco: “We wanted to change the experiential aspect a little. Before ‘Close’ we arrived for two years of pandemic and for that album we had tried to register it all together, in a single ten -day session. With ‘The Spin’ we therefore wanted to change their own method. By seeking a more freezing and eighties shot, we decided to focus on each instrument in a didactic way. We can describe it as a more clinical approach “.
The uptempo of “Void Meridian”, the incisive guitars of “Immolation”, the angryness of “at Races” and the solemnity with the jazz of “The Dress”, the two singles published as anticipation, lead to A Vario album. “The spin” is a lot linked to the sounds that in these ten years the mass have experienced and made their own, but with a more characteristic mastery. “The last piece we wrote for ‘Close’, entitled ‘Dark Horse‘, he already had A little Killing Joke Inside that eighties atmosphere, “says Alberto:“ It is not known if it was a conscious choice or not, though We then continued on that road that we had just touched, but not deepened much.
Once you understand the goal for the new project, we tried to.Make a disc compattedfrom the beginning to the end, which made sense ”. adds Marco:“ Everything has depended on the instruments played: we started a experiment with the toolsadding synthesizers and so on. As tools have been added and we experienced, then the result came. “
Following this procedure, as for the rest of the discography of the disc, therefore Sara underlines, “there is no precise modus operandi” as regards the union of texts and music. Regarding the link between musical composition and narrationthe band’s voice explains: “There are songs, even in ‘The spin’, for which the text was born before music and vice versa. Other texts, perhaps, wrote them directly in the rehearsal room while the others played because hearing the music I understood on which side he pulled the song in the inner and deep level. If then I reflect, I would be said that there is something spontaneous during the writing. Clearly they are part of the music for me ”.
The narrative that characterizes “The Spin” is linked to intimate situationsbut not limited to defined situations, in which the subject, the protagonist or the recipient are not declared, outlining a sort of open stories. “From the point of view of the texts, many themes are touched within the ‘The Spin’,” says Sara: “They range from self -2 to impossible love, to disgust towards themselves There are many themes and very intimate, also quite heavy, as well as personal experience.
But I also tell not personal experiences, trying to identify with someone else. Thanks to total freedom and also to trust from my bandmates. .I really like to play with the metaphors. And I also like to imagine that those who read the texts can find their reading key to us. “He continues:” If I had to explain the writing process, I would compare it to the gesture to close something in a desk drawer and throw away the key, so that it remains stopped over time, not suffering evolutions. It is like a photograph of the moment you are writing the text, how you feel and how you are. “
The first ten years of career
“’Scarlet Doom‘It was an adjective, a color, which we have given ourselves to identify us, “explains Marco Zanin in weaving the story of the first ten years of the career of the Mass:“ It is A very evocative chromatic nuancewhich also derives from an esoteric culture that in the beginning we had a little embraced. It can evoke a whole series of intent, aspects and atmospheres. It is not a term, a label, which we have abandoned, but is a color that has evolved over time. Each disc embraced its own chromatic nuance Red was the initiative nuance; For the second disc, which addressed the theme of water, we embraced white and black colors by combining them with an orange color reminiscent of rust; For ‘Close’, then, we embraced colors more tending to golden.
With ‘The Spin’, on the other hand, the colors have become more gloomy, tending to tar and oil: it is black, but with purple and blue shades “. Linked to this chromatic aspect, very important in creating the aesthetics of the band, they are also the musical references that accompanied the journey of the quartet ,.whose training has remained unchanged for over ten years. “Some of the first two references that come to mind, which have been important both from both a visual and musical point of view, are the album ‘Night Time’ of Killing Joke – central for us to understand the type of language and intentions that we wanted to try to follow – e “… if i die, the die” of the Virgin prunestherefore, Sara Bianchin underlines: “Just in the covers of these two records the use of colors is found to transmit the intention and language that you want to adopt with an album. And this is a thing that has always been close to us, and that goes hand in hand with music and with everything else – because around an album you create a universe, from photos to graphics to artwork”.
By pulling the ranks of this first decade, Sara highlights: “I assume the fact that fortunately the formation has always remained the same, which is not something for nothing discounted, In my opinion we are exactly the same, but we are also completely different people“. He continues:“ Two things they have always kept together is, first of all, Being friends before connectingand then to have a very strong vision Of what is the material, of what is to be a band that often makes you look beyond the difficulties. From a certain point of view We still have a little positive and healthy naivetywho makes us see and live things in a positively naive way. We are aware of many things that are part of the Music Business. But we are pushed first of all by some things, who work as petrol: that we like to make music, that we need to have a shared vision, and that We need to make music“.
Intertwine dark atmospheres to overcome the boundaries
The music of the Mass certainly has a much more international breathalso due to the choice to adopt the English language in songs. “From the beginning we have always had the idea of wanting playing so much out of Italyto want to bring the project away from home as much as possible, in the most positive meaning that this thing can have “, Sara says:” To me personally, then, then, It is much easier to write in Englishand I can also have a minimum of detachment. With Italian it is much more difficult, I would hear the cultural weight more. But you never know: Maybe in the future write in Italian I could take it as a challenge. A disc in Italian is not to be removed from the table of the possibilities, but at least for now it has never been part of our stylistic figure “.
Given their wide experience abroad: How do the international music scene see compared to the Italian one? “I believe that there are no spaces in Italy. Or rather: there are few, but they are few,” says drummer Rocco Toaldo: “While abroad we see many more realities, maybe a building becomes both a concert hall and a thousand other things, but it is still a concert room with a capacity that varies from 300 to 1000 people. From my point of view, here is a bit of the middle band: there is the local or the Live Club serious, while intermediate spaces are missing It is not that they do not completely exist, but there are few.
I see the largest difference between Italy and foreign ones on this aspect, because then here too.There are actually pussy bands. It is not a problem of lack of valid artists, but to be able to see them in suitable contexts and situations. “From the point of view of the public, however, it must be said that the Italians are no longer noisy And warm. In northern Europe, however, people seem much more silent, listen to almost religiously. It is an interesting aspect: the reaction of the public is a bit of a mirror of the country where you are in. “About this topic also comes the thought of Marco Zanin:” I know it sounds like a cliché: Sometimes here in Italy the music seems to be taken not very seriously. Trivially, when I say to a person I make the musician I feel like asking: ‘Yes, ok, but what are you doing true what do you do?’ “. The bass player adds:”In my opinion an interesting aspect, however, is that in the last ten years there has been more consideration than Italian bands that make rock or metaleven abroad. We, for example, on April 18th we present the new album at the Roadburn Festival, where few Italian bands have always passed. And those who participated from the nineties made Dark Sound or Traditional “.
