“Someone will either come up with a whole song on their own, or they’ll come in with half a song and someone else will contribute the other half. Usually over the course of two to three practices, once a song has been started, we will finish it. Someone could be working on that song for three months beforehand at their house on their own though, but when we get together as a band, those songs will usually come together rather quickly.”
— Mastodon frontman Troy Sanders
Metal is usually a pretty straight-forward genre, so it really is refreshing when a band comes along while various layers and dimensions to its sound. In the late 80s and early 90s it was Queensryche and Dream Theatre; in the late 90s into the new millennium, it was bands like Tool, A Perfect Circle and System of a Down (in the early days); now we have Mastodon.
There’s no getting bored when you throw on a Mastodon album. With so many layers to the band’s sound, hearing each song time after time feels like a continuous journey of discovery. As I had written in a previous review of the band: “Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor is a venerable beast behind the kit, leaving listeners’ heads spinning with the various fills and breakdowns from moment to moment. Troy Sanders works off Dailor nicely. Rarely following the guitarists, he lays down tracks that accompany the drumming to the fullest. Guitarist/vocalists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher play off each other tremendously, with solid, heavy riffing that can give way to melodic interludes while still maintaining a certain air of urgency that propels the music forward throughout the album. The vocals are the final piece to this complex puzzle. And, while it’s safe to say of any band, the vocals are as important to the Mastodon sound as any instrumentation — they drift from husky groans to deathly screams to straight-forward rocking prose in the least jarring of fashion.”
The band is still relatively young, but already cranking out new classics on the metal front. But what to pick? The group’s debut EP, “Lifesblood,” released in 2001, was more of a tiny sampler of what the band was to become. 2002’s “Remission” was one hell of a debut, but even the band has called it “crusty” in hindsight (it’s good, but definitely independent. The recent “Call of the Mastodon” release was a collection of tunes, hardly an album to consider as a New Classic. But what we have left is anything but average …
Mastodon
Leviathan
Relapse Records
“we had a month to drink, eat and breathe Leviathan. So we had time to listen to certain parts and go back and change some effects. That’s a lot better than “you have a week to record this stuff that’ll be on CD forever.”
— Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher
A concept album based off Moby Dick?! Well, sort of …
The band found a lot of parallels between where they were at as a band and the message-within-the-book Moby Dick during the recording process. What would come to develop — “Leviathan” — turns out to be just as ferocious as the mythical beast from the novel.
Within the confines of each song, tracks that range from two to four minutes in length, the band throws multiple time changes out, morphing from one style to the next, without missing a beat. Unafraid to go the route of the monster epic, it throws in a 13 plus minute masterpiece for good measure.
Exploding from the get-go with “Blood and Thunder,” “Leviathan” grabs you in a headlock of sonic assault and never lets up. Dailor immediately goes to work with his intricate drumming, keeping a constant barrage on tap as the other members of the band weave together an amalgam of tempo shifts and wave upon wave of riff and solo. The few visitors to this expansive soundscape, Clutch’s Neil Fallon and former Neurosis frontman Scott Kelly, add a bit of flavor to the proceedings but never take away from the core group. The complex nature of the music works two-fold here: a song like “I Am Ahab,” that clocks in at a little under three minutes, feels like an epic, while “Hearts Alive,” the nearly 14 minute gargantuan, seemingly goes by in the blink of an eye. Hinds and Kelliher’s genre-bending riffing throughout this song (and the album as a whole) is one of the group’s many spotlights.
Mastodon was busy doing its thing for a while on the underground circuit, scoring tours with the likes of Clutch, Fear Factory and eventually metal masters Slayer. All the while, the mass public took little notice. The marketing for “Leviathan” hailed the band as a second coming of sorts, drawing comparisons to a mix of Rush and old-school Metalica. “Leviathan” gradually built momentum until the band exploded on Ozzfest in 2005 and started to grace every metal magazine with other new American metal acts.
I see the band possibly picking up a more polished sound with its upcoming release (due, in part, to the shift to a major label). Will it be a noticeable change? Or a shift in direction? Somehow, I don’t think so. “Leviathan” fells like a “Master of Puppets” release. But look at how that worked out for Metallica (the band followed it up with “… And Justice for All”). But, as is becomes a pseudo-manta in this column, no matter what is to come, you can never take away from what has already been created. “Leviathan” is the best Mastodon has offered … for now. And, not only that, it’s one of the best on the metal scene as of late.
What more is there to say? There’s not too many bands that make me sit with baited breath waiting to see what they’ll come up with next. Maybe Tool, maybe Metallica … Guns N’ Roses just to see what “Chinese Democracy” will ultimately become … and Mastodon. I joined the bandwagon late … before the big explosion, but late nonetheless. I kicked myself for it the second I cranked “Blood and Thunder.” Don’t you do the same …
And that’s that. Until next time, take it easy. Stay tuned and enjoy the ride …
