‘…mournful, unsettling, challenging, and frequently incomprehensible, yet vitally important…’
MASSA NERA are a distinctly enigmatic outfit. Born from various musical projects that had played alongside one another in their home state of New Jersey, finding much about this outfit beyond their artistry proves to be a challenge, and also something of a palette cleanser. Toying with genres such as screamo, progressive metal, and sludge metal, the band have been active since 2016, and in that time have created two LPs and a wealth of smaller projects, including a split EP with Los Angeles post-hardcore outfit, Quiet Fear. It is an extensive discography, and one that is entirely free to own via the band’s Bandcamp, with MASSA NERA directing listeners to instead donate their money to a wealth of fantastic causes.
The band’s strong moral fibre continues to be showcased with their newly released third record, ‘The Emptiness of All Things‘. Funded via the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, the band were commissioned to create a body of work that grapples with the climate crisis, and all of the existential horrors that it entails. Their press release is cynical and sardonic in nature, posing the question of whether this endeavour truly matters, and asking as to what difference a niche screamo outfit can truly make. Yet it is perhaps that bleak outlook that lends itself perfectly to sculpting such a record; ‘The Emptiness of All Things‘ isn’t a saccharine wish for everybody to hold hands and come together to save the polar bears, but instead an overt acknowledgement that as long as the system continues to function, the single planet we have been given will become wholly inhospitable.
It would be difficult to find a more disconcerting record that has been released in 2025. What MASSA NERA achieve on this record is a masterclass of defiance; a clear genre label is impossible to assign, and the songs frequently swap any semblance of a concrete structure in favour of unsettling soundscapes that reverberate with both apathy and cataclysm. ‘A Body‘ lurches forwards as a shambling husk, guitars decorating a haunting absence of sound, before exploding forwards with a darkly hypnotic and groove-laden percussive performance. ‘Pèlerin‘ builds upon this darkness, barrelling down upon the listener with a ceaseless violence, as vocalist Chris Rodriguez takes the role of perhaps a shareholder or CEO; ‘I earned everything I have/And wouldn’t mind a warmer winter‘ is snarled against a backdrop of apocalyptic, screeching guitars, as Rodriguez decries a push-back against ‘progress’, and undoubtedly and profit.
‘The Best Is Over‘ reverberates with a dark, bleak beauty, entwining themes of love and the loss of innocence with the monstrous existential dread that inhabits every second of this record. A surprisingly catchy bridge segment vaults into a final immense verse, before the track fades out on a bed of shimmering guitars, weighty with a sense of hollowness. ‘Mechanical Sunrise‘ bristles with a punkish arrogance, as two-step rhythms dance beneath a ferocious vocal performance and scrappy riffs. That cynical nature that MASSA NERA presented the album with is on full display here, as they ask why the source of the climate crisis, the capitalist system that turns natural resources into profit, should be dismantled, when human ingenuity will simply invent new ways of ensuring the earth remains habitable for the few.
‘Lavender‘, featuring Tony Castrati of Crippling Alcoholism, arrives as a thunderous screamo cut, before dissolving into a haunting instrumental bridge that slowly coalesces around a throbbing bass line, before transforming into an unsettling, gratuitous spoken word passage that illustrates that even the perceived safe space academia is not devoid of right wing pipelines and predatory, powerful men. The title track brims with an energy that commands you to move, with its melodic bass lines and driving percussion that pushes the track to increasingly fractious heights; the thunderous blast beats and piercing screams of the climax truly do feel like they are the biblical heralding of a horseman, and makes for the soft gloom of the closing number all the more impactful.
‘New Animism‘ lifts its name from a philosophical movement that seeks to view the world as a community of living creatures, as opposed to a hierarchy humanity exists in command of. Guitars twang mournfully beneath Rodriguez’s weary vocals, as they long for a world that is always just slightly out of reach; a better existence for all that is forever refused by those with power. The track shifts and crumbles during an atmospheric midsection, before rallying itself for one final, brooding verse. It ties the album together beautifully, serving as a sharp yet complimentary contrast to the unrelenting violence that composes much of the rest of this record, and even in its darkness, offers just the faintest glimmer of hope. There is a better world for all, and it starts with making a better world around you. Community, between people and the living world, is the enemy of the driving forces of the climate crisis: fascism and capitalism.
‘The Emptiness of All Things‘ won’t be available to stream; you can download it for free from MASSA NERA’s Bandcamp, or purchase a physical copy. The record exists as a challange, a middle finger to a society hell bent on consumption, pacification, and ignorance; it does not exist to be thrown on as background noise as you go about your daily chores, but forces you to sit with it and within it. The extra steps you have to go through to listen to this record are few, but when we desire everything to be at our fingertips immediately, they are certain to dissuade many from even bothering to check out a single second of this experience. Streaming services have come to exist as an extra tool in the fascist arsenal to disengage us from art and turn it into a consumable product, but as long as musicians such as MASSA NERA exist, art will hold meaning.
Ascribing a number or a rating to this record ultimately feels like a complete subversion of what MASSA NERA have set out to achieve, but it is what the algorithm demands. ‘The Emptiness of All Things‘ is undoubtedly a contender for Album of the Year; creative, spirited, and wholly unconventional, there is little else that has been released this year that comes close to this record in terms of scope, ambition, and vision. It is mournful, unsettling, challenging, and frequently incomprehensible, yet vitally important.
RATING: 90/100 – Excellent
For Fans Of: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Chat Pile, ourfathers., Dreamwell, State Faults, incaseyouleave.
Physical copies of the record can be purchased here.
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