Massive Attack - Protection --> underrated

[Leon]

I remember a lot of negative opinions about this album, but as it is RAINING over here in Holland, I decided to put this on, and for 5 days now it hasn't come out of my player yet.
This is such a SWEET SWEET album. It starts off beautiful and has great variations along the way, with the dancy beats of Three and Spying Glass.
I think it's more than a worthy follow up to Blue Lines, I even dare to say that Blue Lines doesn't beat Protection. They're just not comparable so I can't say which one's better.
Karmacoma and Eurochild have great synths for a '94 album, Better Things and Protection are SWEET as hell and Weather Storm and Heat Miser are great to have sex on, so is the rest of the album.

Any thoughts?

[goldfish]

It suffered from a) following Blue Lines and b) being released at more or less the same time as Dummy.

It sounded very smooth and soulful in comparison to the raw edges of Dummy, and sounded a bit less than groundbreaking as a result. I think it's a lovely album that's stood up well; if it had been released by anyone else, or at any other time, I think it would have received greater critical praise.

It's a shame that Massive Attack haven't come even remotely close to matching their first two albums with subsequent releases.

Simon

[adam]

I agree with you, Leon, but I also like 100th Window, so I'm hardly representative of the whole.

Actually, for 100th Window, I really like the songs where 3D did the vocals, and I dislike the ones with Sinead, and I'm indifferent to the ones with Horace Andy, though it's not the vocals that make me think that. That just seems to be the way things worked out.

Karmacoma is sooooooo sooooo good.

[b.miller]

my only two problems with Protection is 1) the Light My Fire live track at the end.... that seems to go on forever... and 2) No Protection was so awesome when i heard that... it overshadowed Protection completely for me.

[Eikman]

I love Protection!

[Forgotten Sanity]

Unfortunately for me, Protection has been burned into my head as an album that reminds of a girl I used to love, and am still in love with. So perhaps unfairly, it has been tarnished.

But as a testament to how incredible Blue Lines is, I was playing it last night when a friend that was riding with me to a concert asked me to dial up some reggae on my mp3 player. I didn't have any reggae, so I put on Five Man Army, followed by the title track of Blue Lines... he's sitting there, checking it out... then he starts bobbing his head... and then he says to me, "Who the fuck is this? This is fresh as hell, WAY ahead of the times..." And I replied back, "This is Massive Attack, their first album... which came out in 1990."

He spent the whole night tripping out on the fact that the album came out 15 years ago, and bought it today.

[patrick]

ya. i love protection too. such a phenominal albumn. i think the problem is that some kinds of people often look at an albumn for the groundbreaking influence instead of the actual quality of the tracks on the albumn. that probably plagues a lot of the great bands that have been around for a while. if they don't change their sound too much then their latest albumns are rated not as well...

protection isn't as good as blue lines though in my opinion.

[morningrise]

Karmacoma is my favorite Massive Attack song to date. Love that album and I think goldfish was right, if anyone else would have put out that album it would have been received better. Though, I thought Mezzanine was great as well. 100th Window was crapola. I expect nothing else from them now, sadly.

[rayray]

i'm breaking out that 15 year old album tomorrow - no protection is amazing
underworld needs to hook up with the mad phd immediately - imagine the resulting soundtrack

[b.miller]

slightly sort of off-topic...

the mad prof.'s mixes of Angel, Teardrop, and Group Four are also really sweet. I really wish they would've done a "No Mezzanine" equivalent... I'm just greedy, i guess.