YMMV / Massive Attack

• Awesome Music: "Safe From Harm", "Unfinished Sympathy", "Protection", "Karmacoma", "Risingson", "Teardrop", "Inertia Creeps", "Butterfly Caught", "Live With Me", "Atlas Air", "Paradise Circus".
  • The Burial remixes of "Paradise Circus" and the previously unreleased "Four Walls" are just amazing, though it's not clear yet whether this signifies that he'll be remixing the entirety of Heligoland or just those songs.
  • Massive Attack's performance at Glastonbury 2008. An epic version of "Angel", and "Unfinished Sympathy" is given a great treatment. Also includes an awesome unreleased song, "All I Want".
• Epic Riff: Massive Attack have a solid track record of loading their songs with Epic Riffs.
  • "Atlas Air" has one of the most memorably catchy riffs known to man.
  • The climax of "Group Four" begins with an epic guitar riff.
  • "Man Next Door" has an epic bassline.
  • The heartbeat-like bass drum and solemn piano riffs of "Teardrop".
• Epileptic Trees: A fairly popular one concerning Robert del Naja is that he’s also Banksy. There are some visual similarities between their artwork, and Goldie referred to Banksy by the name “Rob”, though del Naja isn’t the only possible “Rob” he could’ve meant.
• First Installment Wins: Their debut album Blue Lines is seen as one of the greatest albums of all time, and its track "Unfinished Sympathy" is commonly hailed as one of the greatest songs of all time.
  • Though Mezzanine is also a fairly popular choice for their best album, and it’s their third. You’ll usually hear one or the other cited, though.
• Genius Bonus: Heligoland is named after a German archipelago that has previously been a Danish and a British possession.
• Nightmare Fuel: A lot of their songs have extremely creepy undertones.
  • "Butterfly Caught," "Risingson," "Angel," and "Inertia Creeps" all qualify.
  • "Atlas Air." "Let 'em feast, my heart is big, my blood will slide [...] fish like little silver knives make the cuts on my insides."
  • The cover of Mezzanine, which depicts a Gross-Up Close-Up of a black beetle. Here's the full image.◊
  • The music video for "Teardrop", with its depiction of an unborn baby drifting through a massive, empty womb, is more than a little disturbing. Especially when the baby start singing.
  • "Man Next Door," a creepy tale of domestic violence made all the more disturbing by the lack of detail and the fact that the song is from the perspective of a neighbor who never actually sees what's going on.
    • It samples the drum part of Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" from Led Zeppelin IV as well, thus importing some Nightmare Fuel from another source.
  • The video for "Voodoo In My Blood", referencing both Phantasm and Possession in featuring a manic woman (Rosamund Pike) being stalked, stabbed and then puppeteered by an ominous floating metal sphere.
  • The video for "Live With Me" is a harrowing depiction of alcoholism, seeing a young woman drink herself to oblivion. We don't even confirm if she's even alive by the end of the video.
• Song Association:
  • The group received immense recognition from "Teardrop" being used as the theme song for House (quite fittingly to boot; its heartbeat-esque rhythm would perfectly complement a medical show). It was also used in the trailer for the original Assassin's Creed.
  • Although not to such significant following, "Paradise Circus" was similarly the theme for Luther.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: "Weather Storm", a wonderfully chill and melancholy track which sounds like one of the gentler songs from the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack.
• Tear Jerker: "Teardrop", in spades. Makes it worse when you know Elizabeth Fraser was recording the song when she learned of her friend and former lover Jeff Buckley's passing. Really hits the heart strings.