Crack The Skye

The thing with Mastodon is that their albums do take time and involvement to get the most out of them. They make albums filled with themes and musical gymnastics that need a serious investment on the part of the listener. On the flipside of this is the fact that they also make albums crammed full of frantic drumming and seriously heavy riffs. In other words there's enough visceral thrills to provide the most meat headed of music fan with instant gratification.

First off: Mastodon's album concepts are officially out of control. It's one thing to base an entire album on Herman Melville's Moby Dick, as the Atlanta band did on 2004's amazing Leviathan. But when you're making a record about a kid who experiments with astral travel and then goes through a wormhole and meets Rasputin and Rasputin enters his body to escape assassination, or something, you've pushed this whole thing way, way further than it needed to be pushed. I interviewed guitarist Bill Kelliher a couple of weeks back, and he sighed deeply before delving into the story, and it took him a good five minutes or so just to get through the thing. That's a bit much.