Mezzanine is the third studio album by English electronic music group Massive Attack, released on 20 April 1998 by Circa and Virgin Records. Produced by Massive Attack and Neil Davidge, it saw the duo expanding their trip hop sound to electronica stylings, with diverse influences from new wave, rock, hip hop, and dub music. Mezzanine topped the charts in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand, becoming the group's most commercially successful album to date. It spawned four singles: Risingson, Teardrop, Angel, and Inertia Creeps. Background The production of Mezzanine was a stressful process. With tensions arising within the group, it almost split the band. They disagreed about the musical direction for the new material. Robert Del Naja first started making samples from new wave records, from the likes of Wire and Gang of Four: it was the music he'd listened to in his early teens. Del Naja wanted Massive Attack to make an album having an atmosphere of edginess and paranoia present in the music of the late 1970s. Grant Marshall, also a new wave fan himself, supported this idea, as he wanted to get away from the "urban soul" of their previous work, Protection, but Andrew Vowles was sceptical. The sessions continued with Vowles and Marshall working on bass and drum loops, while Del Naja carried on experimenting from new wave records. However, during the recording, the group decided to release a new track, Superpredators sampling extensively a Siouxsie and the B