“[Del Naja] is not a team worker,” says Marshall guardedly. “He is a hard character to work with. I appreciate his talent, but we haven’t worked together because we can’t work together. We can work together in the respect that I’ll start a track and ask for his help or his opinion or he’ll start a track and ask for my help or my opinion and we’ll meet halfway sometimes. [But] we have conflict. It is never a case of us sitting in the studio and building a track from the roots up, together.”
    Together or apart, Heglioland works best when Del Naja and Marshall are working in tandem. The album’s standout tracks are those with one or both of them vocalizing, along with honorary member Horace Andy. The three jigsaw into each other on “Splitting The Atom”, gliding from church hymns to tango interludes. “Girl I Love You”, with treacherous rumbles and shuddering basslines, has the help of Andy’s warmth and intimacy filtered through his scared and frantic tone. Del Naja’s signature low-down perversities growl against the pretty melodies of “Rush Minute”, and syncopated beats of “Atlas Air”.
    In contrast — with the exception of Damon Albarn on the heady and aching “Saturday Come Slow”, which turns blood into ice — the rest of the marquee vocalists, like TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Martina Topley-Bird, and Hope Sandoval do not resonate as strongly as Massive Attack collaborations have been known to. Unlike before, where Del Naja and Marshall (and Vowles) were able to bring something previously not experienced out of their collaborations, this time, the connection is noticeably less strong.

Buy Heglioland at iTunes.