125. Mass Mental
Electric Ballroom
13 March 2016
Take the bass player from Metallica, the guitarist from Motörhead, and the singer from Skindred, stick them in a side project that allegedly fuses metal and funk, promise some Sabbath and Motörhead covers, and you’ve got Mass Mental, the sort of idea that sounds killer in a backstage bar at 3am but turns into a war crime by soundcheck.
At the gentle-but-firm insistence of my metalhead mate, we schlepped to Camden’s Electric Ballroom, a venue so small you could practically lean over the bar and adjust the drummer’s hi-hat. You could see it in their eyes: these guys hadn’t been on a stage this size since their “playing for gas money” years, naturally, they were trying to frame it as “keeping it real” as they bounded out with the energy of teenagers at their first Battle of the Bands.
This was clearly a drunken-tour-bus-baby of a project, the sort of thing you dream up halfway through bottle two of Patrón and commit to without ever thinking about reality. Which, judging by what followed, they hadn’t. What we got wasn’t a slick funk-metal hybrid, it was Spinal Tap’s jazz odyssey, only with less self-awareness.
They may have been trying to convey a looser, freer vibe than they would be allowed to do in their day-jobs, but when the frontman is visibly reading his lyrics from a sheet of paper then a few more days in a rehearsal room would have gone a long way. The six original songs came and went, mercifully short, instantly forgettable, and united only by their ability to bewilder a largely metal crowd who just looked perplexed.
Then the covers came, and for a moment, all was right with the world. They opened with an Earth, Wind & Fire number, which was like finding a cocktail cherry in your pint: unexpected, not unwelcome, but not why you came, then the Skindred singer vanished and Whitfield Crane from Ugly Kid Joe appeared and started doing recognisable covers. Suddenly, it was a proper gig: “Fairies Wear Boots”, “War Pigs”, “Symptom of the Universe”, “We Are the Road Crew”, “Ace of Spades,” all belted out with the sort of commitment and tightness you’d expect from musicians of this calibre.
And then the bloody Skindred singer came back. We thought he’d gone to the bar. We prayed he’d gone to the bar. But no, two more attempts at the “funk-metal” thing, like being dragged back into a bad dream you’d only just woken up from.
Calling this a misfire is too kind. This had Saddam Hussein’s Scud missile accuracy. Aimed at glory but missing by several hundred miles, instead landing squarely on some bewildered goat herder’s shack and, like that goat-herder, we all left a little pissed off.