I still can't believe how fresh "Mezzanine" is, nine years after its release. As much as I love "Blue Lines" and "Protection", neither of them is nearly half as perfect as this one. An essential mix of distorted guitars, deep basses, massive percussion and haunting, oniric samples. The atmosphere is so dark and hazy, that one almost feels it physically. Like slow descent into quicksands... What more can I say? "Mezzanine" remains a pure MASTERPIECE, simply a must-have.

First off - i'm not a trip hop fan at all. I usually despise all forms of hip hop, mainstream or underground stuff. Its just not my kind of music. So of course I never was interested in Massive Attack before. But one day over a friend's, he had Mezzanine playing and I was pretty intrigued by it... Here I was listening to the supposed trip hop genre and enjoying it. Some songs had "rap" type vocals, while others used a female voice. I loved it and had to go buy a copy for myself. Stand outs for me include Teardrop and Inertia Creeps. A lot of tracks use guitars and drums. A very moody and sometimes dark album.

Perhaps it's just that I like things I'm more familiar with but I always seem to prefer the earlier work of any given artist. One of very few exceptions to this rule is this, Massive Attack's third album. Sure, there are loads of classic tracks on its predecessors, Blue Lines and Protection, but to my mind these LP's can't compete with the superbly moody atmosphere that pervades Mezzanine. Big brooding basslines, heavy dub percussion, thrashy guitar and impassioned vocals are all fused here to very great effect. The group's next album, 100th Window, is good and treads similar territory but ultimately comes across as a watered-down and less powerful version of this masterpiece.