Massive Attack are one of those enigmatic groups that burst out of the Bristol scene, along with Tricky and Portishead, who brought a certain intense gloom to music in the ’90s, blending hip hop with rock, jazz, and reggae, only to get lumped in with Trip Hop, when it was always so much broader in scope than that.

Deeply political, 3D and Daddy G are carrying the torch for a group that previously included the aforementioned Tricky, and Mushroom, fighting the good fight, after their start hanging with graffiti and breaking crews – not to mention the vibrant sound system crew The Wild Bunch – around the River Avon.

They are one of the most respected bands on the planet currently, not only for their musical output, but also, their unswerving dedication to their political stances. While they take on the swine who try and police what they say, we’re going to see if their back catalogue stacks up, as we’ve done with other artists before (here).

BLUE LINES (1991)

Honestly, if this entire album was complete garbage, it wouldn’t matter because it’s got ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ on it, which is hands-down, one of the greatest pieces of music ever created anywhere in the world. Uniquely British, forward thinking, emotionally stirring and everything else besides, ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ is worth your entrance fee alone.

Elsewhere, it’s still pretty great and deserves its place as a British classic, even if other releases would fine-tune what Massive Attack are so great at, and surpass it. Album opener ‘Safe From Harm’ points toward the group’s future, being a slo-mo, modern soul gem, and reggae legend Horace Andy appears for the first time, all set for a future of collaborations with the group. Sections of the album sound pretty dated, but as debuts go, it’s pretty surefooted.

PROTECTION/NO PROTECTION (1994/95)

From the impossibly gorgeous title-track with Tracey Thorne, through to ‘Three’ and ‘Sly’ featuring Nicolette, Massive Attack show that they are at their irresistible best when working with a female vocalist, supplying a deftness of touch to allow the vocals to fully breathe and allow for a flood of emotion to pour out of the speakers.

‘Karmacoma’ in 2026, sounds a bit daft now, but also points toward the creeping sinister sound the group would lean harder on in future years. The claustrophobic moments on this album are intense, but it’s the more languid moments that really make the LP sing. You’d argue it was one of the finest albums of the ’90s if it wasn’t for the clunky and terrible cover of The Doors’ ‘Light My Fire’ tacked onto the end. That said, a huge leap forward from ‘Blue Lines’, and one that apparently saw Tricky leave the group because the rest of the band wouldn’t lend him £2.50 to go to the chippy.

MEZZANINE (1998)

‘Mezzanine’ may be regarded their most famous album, and maybe that’s because it features the utterly magical ‘Teardrop’ on it, which is remarkably, about as good as ‘Protection’ and ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ that came before it. Even if you were only a passing fan of the group, the holy trinity of these three songs is enough to want to defend them in a pub argument. If the band did nothing else, they’ll always have those three.

Mercifully, this album is no slouch – but it is a more challenging listen. The gloom and paranoia has crept in harder, and we get the unsettling ‘Inertia Creeps’ and the menacing ‘Angel’, as well as Horace Andy revisiting an old song in ‘Man Next Door’, which turns the plaintive original into something that sounds genuinely oppressive.

100TH WINDOW (2003)

Taking their time, the group shed another band member, waiting five years to release ‘100th Window’. Things were different this time and instead of looking for old samples, Del Naja got a rock group to jam, sampled them, and made them play while a constant strobe light went on and off. Hectic.

The tension is upped on the record, with ‘Butterfly Caught’, ‘Future Proof’, and ‘Name Taken’ being twitchy, nervous things. However, there’s the mighty Sinead O’Connor who creates the centrepiece of the record with ‘What Your Soul Sings’ – she gets three songs and they’re as good as anything in the Massive Attack back catalogue.

It feels like this record isn’t in the Massive Attack Hall of Fame, but maybe it should be.

HELIGOLAND (2010)

They’d recorded a soundtrack and released an EP, and seven years after the last LP, it was time for a new thing. The album kicks off with the discordant menace of ‘Pray For Rain’, and Guy Garvey featuring ‘Flat Of The Blade’ is a hugely unsettling listen. For anyone looking for that old Massive Attack, there’s ‘Paradise Circus’ with Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval, which is certainly a fan favourite.

There’s more echoes of post-punk and post-rock smattered through the album, but they’re still able to create really scintillating music with this too – notably on ‘Babel’ featuring the marvellous Martina Topley-Bird (shout out to her excellent album ‘The Blue God’ while we’re at it). If the previous album became marginally unmoored from the group’s trademark of post-dub soundtracking, then here, it creeps back in. This album is a little more organic and, while there’s much railing and kicking against the pricks, you get the sense of a little more ease for men their age. All-in-all, not a bad album among them, and that’s some feat.