Amenra – Mass VI (Review)

Amenra are a doom/post-metal band from Belgium and this is their sixth album.

The music on this album is colossal and when it’s playing seems to envelop the world. This is a band that manage to channel their emotions into long songs of harrowing, oppressive music that still manages to retain both subtlety and nuance when it needs to.

Yes, Mass VI is textured and rich, but in a dark, lightless way. That’s not to say that there’s no shading here, it’s just that even the lighter parts tend to be just gradations of grim intensity rather than offering reflective breathing room as you might expect. Amenra know what they’re doing with their music though, and if we didn’t want to be taken on a traumatic, distressing journey, we wouldn’t have volunteered.

The album isn’t without its beauty, even if it is of the heartbreaking, agonising variety. As I say; this is a highly textured release, and the band have made sure that there’s plenty of variety and differentiation between the songs.

Heavy, intense, and full of emotive delivery, Mass VI is an exemplar in how to produce engaging and compelling modern music in an individualistic and affecting way.

This is an essential listen for anyone who likes non-standard heaviness.