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By RYAN MAVITY
I have to admit I did not know much about the band Mastodon before listening to their new album, Blood Mountain, other than that they are a metal band who had toured with Slayer. If they had the Slayer seal of approval then I figured they must be pretty good.
Well, I don’t know what kind of peyote they smoke down in Mastodon’s hometown of Atlanta, but whatever it is they should keep smoking it. Blood Mountain heralds Mastodon’s arrival as one of the most promising new metal bands on the scene today. The band, consisting of drummer Brann Dailor, guitarists and vocalists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher, and bassist and vocalist Troy Sanders, comes up with a mix of the prog rock tendencies of Tool and mixes it with the sludgy riffs of Alice in Chains to create a sound that is both heavy and intelligent. This should come as no surprise to fans of the band whose previous album, Leviathan, was a progressive metal concept album based on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (yes, you read that sentence correctly).
For the follow-up, Blood Mountain, the band has made a record about, in the words of Sanders, “climbing up a mountain and the different things that can happen to you when you’re stranded on a mountain, in the woods and you’re lost.” It’s that same sort of oddball creativity that the band brings to the record. Either that or, like I said, they must have some really good hallucinogens in the ATL.
Despite all the bizarre concepts, it should be noted that above all else the album rocks. The opening track, “The Wolf Is Loose,” is a straightforward thrash rocker highlighted by Dailor’s insane drum fills. “Crystal Skull” begins to delve into the album’s concept with its imagery of flames and forests—all it’s missing is Wagner’s Norse gods and dwarves—all set to swirling guitars and kick drums. “Sleeping Giant” alternates great acoustic guitar work with an ocean of downtuned guitars and growling vocals, complete with a bridge that the boys from Tool would be proud of. “Capillarian Crest” starts off as more jazz-fusion than metal but soon gets heavy and shows that this band has some serious musical chops.
“Circle of Cysquatch” furthers the story of the album, which, according to the Blood Mountain Wikipedia page, is about a character in search of the Crystal Skull, which he hopes to place at the top of the Blood Mountain. Furthermore, Sanders says that the “Cysquatch” is a “one-eyed Sasquatch that can see into the future.” Okay. Anyway, this particular track finds the band indulging in all its prog metal tendencies, which is a good thing in this case. On an album full of bizarre ideas and songs, “Bladecatcher” might be the oddest. The band combines an extended guitar solo with double kick drums and some truly weird vocal effects to create a sound like that of Rush on a combination of steroids and mescaline. And yet, much like the rest of the album, the band pulls it off.
“Colony of Birchmen” brings us back to reality with a more simple metal approach with help from Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme. “Hunters of the Sky” adds power metal to the already full plate of influences. “Hands of Stone” speeds the pace back up, though it may be the weakest track on the album. “This Mortal Soil”—this may be a good time to mention that this album has some of the best song titles you will ever find—slows things down again while the band changes time signatures at unexpected places.
The penultimate track, “Siberian Divide,” is about, well, I’ll let Troy Sanders (courtesy of Wikipedia) explain: “The main character is caught in a blizzard where [he] becomes frostbitten and frozen and [he’s] starving and starts to hallucinate. [Then] this snow queen appears before him and tells him it’s OK to start eating his own flesh. And then he starts to do that. Then an aurora borealis appears, and he thinks its God and it starts affecting this crystal skull he’s been toting up the mountain and it starts to warm his body. That, coupled with the knowledge of the aurora borealis being God, gives him the strength to carry on again.” Now who can argue with that?
The album concludes with the bluesy, country-influenced “Pendulous Skin,” showing that the band can still take you to new territory just when you thought they couldn’t go anywhere crazier than where they just were. It also should be noted that after this final track, there is a long silence until toward the end of the disc, which features the reading of a “fan letter” by Josh Homme and ending with a demonic laugh. Truth be told, there was no other way for this record to end.
Blood Mountain, despite all its progressive excess, is ultimately a rewarding album that demands multiple listens. It’s an album that sums up what metal is about: loud, fast, aggressive and yes, occasionally goofy. It will be fun to see what these guys do for an encore. |
