Messa (Italian for "Mass") have only been around for a few years, and yet their debut here is a crushing, adventurous, occult work of genius. Building on a Sabbath-Doom base of traditional riffs and tube-amp power, they branch out and pull in all sorts of other influences without getting off-track. This album is highly eclectic, and yet it maintains a powerful Doom atmosphere that never wavers. The vocals of frontwoman Sara are a major part of this, as they are powerful and delicate by turns, and she is always in complete command of what she is doing, always in step with the music.

The real songs trade off with shorter, almost ambient atmospheric pieces, but when Messa want to crush, they crush. Songs like "Babalon", the slow-building smoker "Hour of the Wolf", and the album centerpiece "Blood". The album as a whole presents a unified and oppressive landscape, and is a nice example of an album built as an album – not just a collection of songs. Obscure Doom at its best.