Crack the Skye - Mastodon (2009)

(Not sure I understand the business logic of putting your whole record on Youtube for promotional purposes, but then not allowing embedded playback by people who… you know… actually want to help promote the record. But here we are.)

Listened to this on a plane, with my new set of Bose Quiet Comforts (not a paid spokesperson, but… damn. So much better than the Sonys I’d been rocking) so I got to hear a lot of the details even with all the noise outside.

The thing I love about Mastodon is that they wouldn’t have to go to as much trouble as they do, building album-long epic stories about Czarist Russia (or Moby Dick, or something like Dune, or whatever) with vocal harmonies and surprisingly dense and intricate arrangements. But the fact that they do all the work to capture that complexity really shoots them to the elite level of heavy music.

Thanks to Pearl Jam / King’s X / Springsteen producer Brendan O’Brien, they are able to fit all that detail onto the record in impressive fashion.

I’d be lying if I said I followed the story, but it’s a great record regardless.

Tracks I Liked

Divinations - Some of the best guitar work here.

Quintessence - just a touch of hardcore to set off the more angular metal elsewhere.

Ghost of Karelia - Sludgy and driving