Review
Amenra
Mass V

Rituals are deeply ingrained into our shared human experience and the modern ones seemingly thrust us back through the ages to some vaguely remembered race memory locked in the genetic code in safe guarded in our cells, and Amenra not only appreciates this phenomenon but exploit our collective unconscious to produce some rather breathtaking performances that at this point has their reputation bordering on the level of some of those “must see before you die” type bands; their latest studio effort is another step in the direction of re-imagining that ritual for the studio.

Mass V just sounds so immense when you blast it on your stereo that it seems to best match the bands intense live experience than that of any other recording that Amenra had previously ever achieved with their studio endeavors, but with Mass V they seem to have finally figured out how to get that ritual fervor and gothic doom (not a genre but rather a feeling of how the music should come from a crumbling gothic cathedral at the end of the world); all four songs just brim with tense emotional bloodletting whether it be the measured processional march of “Dearborn And Buried” or the grand slow burn of “A Mon Amie”.

Where the brevity of Mass V seems like both a boon (you are certainly left wanting more when the last notes drain out) and a detriment (with only four songs on the CD version of the album, it just feels short), the scale of the sound is without a doubt the most impressive aspect of the album; at no point does Amenra’s sound shrink even when the quiet parts are slowly developing the course of these compositions, the record just sounds huge. Still, (as with their other records) Mass V still comes off almost like a bunch of variations on the same musical motif and to the uninitiated that might be a turn off while listening to such a monolithic movement of music; but long time and discerning listeners will recognize and appreciate exactly what Amenra do… pummeling the listener for as long as possible in a virtually ritualistic exorcism of angst.