Here's a few parallels.
In 1991 Massive Attack came to the attention of a wider audience against the backdrop of President George Bush going to war with Iraq.
After a period of boom, Britain was in recession. Music became tougher, hardcore and techno replaced the piano jingles of Italo-house...
And Massive's 'Blue Lines' sprang from nowhere, killing the tempo with gurgling dub bass lines and swaddling us in luxurious strings and a lullaby of intimate vocals.
Some twelve years later and, after a five year gap, Bristol's slowest working crew is about to return with their fourth album, George Bush is president and threatening war with Iraq and...
...need we labour the point?
Mushroom has of course departed the band and Marshall ducked out for this album, but Del Naja's '100th Window' is every bit the production masterpiece its predecessors are - in places harkening back to, if not quite matching, the collective's glorious debut.
'100th Window' is characteristically textured and Massive remain one of the few outfits that handle vocals as well as they orchestrate intricate drum patterns - as witnessed by the inter-lacing snares and high hats accompanying Sinead O'Connor as she whispers directly into your middle ear on 'What Your Soul Sings'.
Sinead takes on Shara Nelson's role on the LP, contributing vocals to 'Special Cases' and, most notably, on a toughened up re-working of 'Safe From Harm' called 'A Prayer For England'.
Meanwhile Horace Andy delivers his residential stylised vocal through the dub and bass-step of 'Name Taken' and 'Everywhen'.
There are more strings and washes on this album than on the first three LPs and what sounds like a cross between an electricity pylon and a tuning fork joins the dots between songs, bridges a mid-song break down and rides a subtly chaotic percussion pattern.
Dark passages rest on plectrumed guitar-lines and Asian influenced rhythms, while heavy, discordant bowed strings sear across tracks such as the ultra moody 'Butterfly Caught' and 'Antistar'.
As ever, it's the minutiae (a sudden dip in the bass-line key or an a-rhythmic electronic percussive pulse) that keeps your attention locked.
And although the pace remains downbeat, accompanying patterns refer to bangra and drum 'n' bass, as high hats skip and splutter between the hip hop tempo of snare and kick drum.
Every time Massive release an album they're asked to conjure up the near impossible - a record that's fresh, while still sounding unmistakably like Massive Attack. This time it sounds like they've succeeded.
by Ben Osborne