"To wrap it all up in a nice box, The Mass are a euro metal (but from Oakland CA), art rock, jazz fusion, death metal, pop group. Got that? Good."
-- review of City of Dis in Rock Sound (UK), November 2003
They Zorn through styles of rock heavitude: black metal, grindcore, spooky jazz, Sabbathed-up diabolical funk, falsetto and growls, what-have-you. But you see the intricate progressions, and then there you are headbanging at their shows. Time signatures change and you're rocking out. And it's so predatory and muscular. --Like their name; cuz listening to them, you don't think of a Catholic mass at all, more like a mass of say variegated tissues lodged in your brain, tickling the back of your throat: little teeth, hanks of hair, tendons pulling at tiny misformed musculatures. Alive and full of this and that gnawing at itself. Then that all gets married to this loping preying malevolent jazz storyline. It's crunchy as charred barbecue cast in bronze, if you can picture that, looking all caveman-like and animalistic and regressive. There's the pageanty of its teleology. It's downright inexorable.
Releases (errata intentional):
Self-titled EP (Whole Enchilada Records, 2002)
City of Dis (Monotreme Records, 2003; Crucial Blast Records, 2005)
Perfect Picture of Wisdom and Boldness (Monotreme Records, 2005; Crucial Blast Records, 2005)
References:
www.themass.us
www.monotremerecords.com
www.crucialblast.net
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