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10.0
8880
10.0 |
Daily Telegraph
I believe, as with their trio of Nineties classics, we’ll still be listening to this in decades to come
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8.0
8892
8.0 |
Scotland on Sunday
...an impressively consistent album. Massive Attack remain essential to British music's soul
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8.0
8740
8.0 |
Eye Weekly
Somehow, the times and the Bristol group’s ambitions have caught up with each other, and Heligoland’s blend of churning melodies and urgent beats sounds absolutely necessary
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8.0
8865
8.0 |
musicOMH
Heligoland doesn't touch the perfection of Blue Lines, but few albums do. It is though a return to form from one of the real pioneering bands of our age
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8.0
8877
8.0 |
The Fly
It’s a brutally inspired comeback, and a colossal achievement all round
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-
8.0
9379
8.0 |
Rolling Stone
Creepy and danceable
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8.0
9454
8.0 |
Rolling Stone
...the Bristol duo return with a potent dose of their psychedelic boom-bap aided by guest vocalists Tunde Adebimpe, Damon Albarn, Hope Sandoval and Martina Topley-Bird
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8.0
8428
8.0 |
Uncut
The sound of a group at the very height of their power, flexing their ample muscle, Heligoland is the album Massive Attack had to produce for fear of fading further from relevance. Now we can all learn to love them once again
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8.0
8456
8.0 |
The Skinny
...it just wouldn’t be Massive Attack if you didn’t have to work for it, and the rewards are here if you're willing
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8.0
8663
8.0 |
Clash
Returning from a six-year long wilderness of soundtrack work and greatest hits, ‘Heligoland’ sees the duo back at the top of their game
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8.0
8787
8.0 |
The Times
Palpably the work of the same imprint that gave us Blue Lines. And yet Heligoland is a darker, more complex album than any pastiche of the past could provide
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8.0
8796
8.0 |
The Irish Times
Shot through with an ambient- noir feeling, Heligoland only gradually reveals its manifold charms. Artfully executed and almost hypnotic in places, this is another triumph for one of best British bands of the past 20 years
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8.0
8807
8.0 |
The Guardian
You could argue that Massive Attack haven't done anything new here: its highlights could have fitted perfectly on Mezzanine. That said, even the most cursory listen to Flat of the Blade informs you that they're still doing things that no one else does
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8.0
8826
8.0 |
Evening Standard
When Damon Albarn lends his lungs to the yearning acoustic ballad Saturday Come Slow, you hope that Massive Attack won't leave it so long again.
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8.0
8829
8.0 |
The Times
Heligoland offers merciful proof that, when it comes to evoking a certain sort of restive, overcast unease, an on-form Massive Attack can still deliver
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8.0
8837
8.0 |
The Observer
...a shadowy beast bespeckled by starry guest vocalists
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7.5
8756
7.5 |
Beats Per Minute
Heligoland is an albums of thorns and roses, albeit one in which the roses are just too beautiful to let the thorns kill all the fun
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7.0
8895
7.0 |
Spin
A lovely bummer, as always
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7.0
9624
7.0 |
The Line Of Best Fit
Massive Attack have managed to create an album that is both muted and intense, with a multitude of influences, sounds and genres
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7.0
8901
7.0 |
Rave Magazine
While Massive Attack are now more content to travel in their own introspective direction instead of capturing and defining the zeitgeist ... Heligoland is still the sound of a group subtly evolving
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7.0
8995
7.0 |
Sydney Morning Herald
A slow start, maybe, but by the time Atlas Air puts you on the autobahn home, Del Naja and Marshall have mounted a convincing argument to delay being consigned to obsolescence for a little while yet
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6.0
9002
6.0 |
The Quietus
Songs teetering on the edge of substance are muddied with conventional uses of tension, build and rhythm and vocal use that does nothing to retrieve the album's detractively self-referential nature
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6.0
9098
6.0 |
The Digital Fix
If Heligoland initially sounds very disappointing, it does improve with successive listens, but perhaps not by as much as you want it to
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6.0
9735
6.0 |
God Is In The TV
Whilst it’s unfair to expect Massive Attack to meet the heady heights of their former glories, Heligoland does provide some decent noughties thrills
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6.0
9397
6.0 |
Tiny Mix Tapes
...it's a logical progression from 100th Window, but because their progressions are neither commonsense nor predictable, it's difficult to predict how it will hold up in terms of posterity
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6.0
8846
6.0 |
Independent on Sunday
No longer vital, then, but not without the odd moment to remind us why they mattered
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-
6.0
8857
6.0 |
PopMatters
19 years is an eternity in pop music. Perhaps no one would have guessed Massive Attack would still be around after such a span. Well, they still are. They’re just not as massive
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-
6.0
8820
6.0 |
The Independent
...overall there are too many pale reflections of former glories to regard Heligoland as the return to form some have claimed
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6.0
8708
6.0 |
NME
Some good tracks can’t hide the fact that this is the stuff of an identity crisis. It’s one thing to call on your famous friends to put flesh on your bones. It’s another if you leave the listener wondering if you’ve any spine at all
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-
6.0
8288
6.0 |
Observer Music Monthly
Do we still love one of the best outfits of their age, a group that can still, infrequently, elicit accolades? Yes, but, if truth be told, the passion is subsiding and the 20-year itch is starting to kick in
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-
6.0
8347
6.0 |
Mojo
Print edition only
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6.0
8354
6.0 |
Q
Print edition only
-
6.0
8532
6.0 |
The List
It’s a bit like the album cover itself – eerie and bizarre, but still you can’t stop looking
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-
6.0
8618
6.0 |
Drowned In Sound
Although much of Heligoland suggests that Massive Attack might finally have burned out, the glowing embers of what they once had can still be glimpsed providing a light in the dark
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5.0
8881
5.0 |
Pitchfork
So what does an album this defeatist-sounding have to say? It just so happens to come at a time where defeatism feels pretty natural, and ironically that makes these songs feel even harder to relate to
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4.0
8899
4.0 |
The Scotsman
... there's a poverty in the songwriting that makes their usual signatures – ominous industrial rumble, drowsy beats, sinister, whispered vocals – sound enervated, even lazy
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