Review by Aaron on July 11, 2005.

Ok, imagine the guys from jazz rockers Morphine, King Crimson and Frank Zappa decided to get together and do a hardcore punk band. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well it probably would sound good if the aforementioned individuals were involved in it. Unfortunately, The Mass misses the mark considerably.

City of Dis blends hardcore with psycho-saxophone playing and interesting breaks. Each of these components of The Mass’s music ain’t bad in and of themselves, it’s the syntheses of the components that really falls into the realm of the bad. There’s more focus on doing too much of each too quickly that leaves the whole thing a jumbled mess. Even with improvisational jazz, which I personally loathe as it’s just glorified tuning up, you wind up getting some sense of cohesion occurring in the music. This doesn’t happen with City of Dis. The songs are just groups of different sounds, not songs unto themselves. If the band had spent maybe a few more months working on their sound, they might’ve been able to put out an album that showed the creativity and drive they were obviously striving for. This type of synthesis has been tried before and very,very few pull it off, which should acting as a warning sign and indication of greater attention to the end product on the part of the band, in this case The Mass, attempting it. It should be said that no one in the band is a particularly bad musician, and yet they make bad music. There’s really not much more to say on the matter other than “Please don’t do this again”.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 6
Atmosphere: 3
Production: 6
Originality: 4
Overall: 4

Rating: 4.6 out of 10