Anniversary tours tend to be wearily nostalgic. But Massive Attacks’s Mezzanine (1998), their third album and artistic apex, has acquired greater relevance with age. In an era of “hostile environments”, drone warfare and surveillance capitalism, its air of encroaching paranoia feels eerily prescient. Is there a better description of the anxious tedium of Brexit than “Inertia Creeps”?
On 2 March, at Steel Yard – a 14,000-capacity, purpose-built venue in Filton Airfield, Bristol (the band’s hometown) – Massive Attack closed the UK leg of Mezzanine XXI. By way of reminding the audience how anomalous the number one-album was upon its release, a series of anodyne, chart-topping 1998 pop songs precede the band’s arrival (Cher’s “Believe”, Aqua’s “Doctor Jones”). Yet Mezzanine also exemplifies the dark innovation that flourished from 1997-98 as Britpop imploded (Pulp’s This Is Hardcore, Radiohead’s OK Computer, Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, Primal Scream’s Vanishing Point).
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