Nevertheless, Black Milk is another sinister listening experience, with layers of samples and Fraser returning to add some supernatural vocals to the mix. Massive Attack originally tried to pull this off as their own work, amending later album sleeves to credit the ‘sample’ to Mann after the latter tried to get an injunction to stop sales of Mezzanine until he was rightly credited. – Michelle DhillonĪlthough an awesome part of Mezzanine, Black Milk is essentially a reworked cover of 1972 track Tribute by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. For that alone, Mezzanine is one of the greatest albums ever made. It lingers and stays with you, permanently. There is a darkness on this album that doesn’t leave you when it ends. When he sings: “I’ve got to get away from here / This is not a place for me to stay”, we can really feel the fear in his words. Andy’s vocals are much slower and teamed with echoes, making the whole song dark, dense and gripping. Similar to their reworking of Angel, Massive Attack strip all the joy from Holt’s original and force the lyrics centre stage, with Horace Andy on vocals. Man Next Door is a cover of John Holt’s reggae song from 1968, rather ingeniously infused with John Bonham’s near-iconic drum riff from Led Zeppelin‘s cover of blues anthem When The Levee Breaks. Its placement on Mezzanine is crucial in retaining the consistent claustrophobic flow of the album. He weaves a rather sorry tale of dysfunctional seduction in an unwanted relationship, but the overall impact of Inertia Creeps is astounding. 3D picks his way through the mire, his lyrics meandering through however they can. Thunderous drums hurtle in, spiralling the whole track into oblivion. Inertia Creeps beckons, its heavily percussive Turkish, or to be accurate, Çiftetelli instrumental samples recklessly colliding with the intro to Ultravox’s Rockwrok. It’s horribly apt then that by the end of Teardrop, black flowers blossom and the love Fraser sings of falls apart. Fraser stated in a later interview that, for her, the song is about her close friend Jeff Buckley‘s death. Massive Attack allow Fraser’s blissful vocals to dominate and build the atmosphere, a trick they pull off successfully throughout Mezzanine. The beauty of this song lies in its simplicity. This is interspersed with the sparse tick-tocking sample, which turns into a heartbeat. Elizabeth Fraser of The Cocteau Twins contributes ethereal, childlike vocals that bless Teardrop with naivety, hope and wonder. There is a slight respite from this darkness when we hit Teardrop, but a raw tension remains throughout this masterful number. The impact of Inertia Creeps is astounding. Why you keep me testing, keep me tasking/ “Where have all those flowers gone? Long time passing/ On top of this, Daddy G directly references Pete Seeger: I say unbelievable as it’s barely detectable amidst the furore of reverb and deep dub samples. Almost unbelievably, Risingson samples the Dylan-esque folk song I Found A Reason by The Velvet Underground. 3D and Daddy G both rap from chorus to chorus, challenging each other, fuelling paranoia and suspicion. The track is about the Bristol club scene at the time and this is quite clearly reflected in its lyrics. For me, Risingson is a sonic representation of a spider spinning a silvery web in a dank sewer. A throbbing bassline underscores ghostly atmospherics, shredded guitar and wah-wah samples to a stellar effect. Risingson builds on this creepy vibe even further, firmly taking us into a claustrophobic vortex of sound. You can actually feel the tension in the music as you listen to it. Angel invokes a feeling of dread, yet it’s addictive, sensual and inspiring, building a wall of dense layered samples. It chews up Horace Andy’s 1973 song You Are My Angel, turning the sentimental reggae number into something eery and deeply uncomfortable, before spitting it back out.
It’s dark, creepy, insular and lends the opening 70 seconds a haunted feeling that the rest of the album never shakes off. A low vibrating bassline fades into play, before slow tick-tocking beats and scattered string samples kick in. Mezzanine opens quite unlike any album I’ve heard before. But Mezzanine is a sleeping beast that has well and truly withstood the ravages of time. Like a number of other 1990’s British albums that have gone on to be regarded as all-time classics, it was released to little fanfare or drama. For Massive Attack’s Mezzanine it’s a case of better late than never, though. I’ve been meaning to review this album for several years now and laughably missed my own deadline to cover it in time for its 20-year anniversary in late 2018.
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