For a period of time, Myspace rebranded its social media presence as a music-oriented content site. I both wrote and contributed to a number of pieces published there, all now scrubbed from online existence. In their absence, I share selections of some of that work, albeit sometimes in submitted draft versions, sometimes with draft titles, as opposed to edited form.
This piece was originally published at Myspace in June 2014 and later expunged from their site. This is the edited, published version. If you are the copyright holder and wish to have the piece removed from this page, please contact the site owner.
There's pretty much no such thing as a heavy metal band anymore. That simple luxury, denoting the pure essence of the form, has given way over the years to the convenient tyranny of subgenre, hyphenation and preference-based stratification. Atmospheric death, blackened thrashcore, ethereal doom and other such multifaceted metallic mouthfuls define bands, albums and, tellingly, audiences. More so than sounds, keywords are the drivers that either compel or repel prospective listeners. The sheer abundance of options available to today's headbanger necessitates litmus testing; there's just not enough time to listen to all of it.
For some metalheads, it was permissible to label Mastodon a prog metal band for the sake of ease and the guarantee of a decent night's sleep. Others sweated through the sheets until sunup, unable to reconcile the apparent hardcore and sludge elements. Then Crack The Skye (2009) dropped and nothing was the same. Clean vocals and hooky choruses rivaled growls and snarls, with Brann Dailor, Brent Hinds and Troy Sanders each jockeying for position on the mic. Such accessibility significantly softened the blow of the absurdly complicated lyrical themes involving the adventures of an astral projecting paraplegic pulling a Being John Malkovich on Grigori Rasputin and, ummm, like, fighting Satan. What should have been by all rights a ghastly Frankenstein turn—a monstrous collection of parts held together by artistic madness—instead helped Mastodon achieve universality in a fractious metal world and proved to be one of the most critically acclaimed records in the genre's history.
Regrettably, this marked a tipping point. Having lost any incentive to return to the Mastodon of old, the band mined Crack The Skye for all it was worth, releasing extraneous special editions and goofy tchotchkes like this 124-piece jigsaw puzzle. Set lists became predictable for those enthused enough to catch the band more than once in the subsequent two years. (Live At The Aragon, the official release of a professionally recorded 2009 Chicago tour stop, captures that sufficiently.) It was almost a blessing when the Jonah Hex feature film they scored alongside Marco Beltrami unequivocally bombed at the box office.
After the heights of Crack The Skye, the band's 2011 follow-up The Hunter felt small by comparison, the useful yet inessential appendix to an unadulterated epic. Though it didn't seem to hurt the album's sales, pre-release singles like "Black Tongue" and the tepid "Curl of the Burl" accentuated that this was less of an event than its predecessor. Mastodon's first full-length in nearly three years, Once More 'Round The Sun (Reprise) rectifies that with colossal, catchy songs that exceed expectations by building upon the strengths of their breakthrough record.
Crack The Skye opener "Oblivion" began with the lyrics "I flew beyond the sun before it was time." A far more listenable and possibly memorable album, Once More 'Round The Sun, takes a trip familiar to the scores of their fans that stuck around in the lean years. The prog elements have been shrunken down to a size where they can be drowned in the bathtub, or at least ignored. Though not taken to the extremes of Boris' latest full-length Noise, Mastodon have grown to epitomize a sort of heavy pop, just a few crucial degrees shy of SiriusXM's unfashionable Octane format. Though it makes self-segmenting metal fans uncomfortable, the hulking hookery of solar powered cuts like "The Motherload" has more in common with Shinedown than Slayer.
No band, not even Baroness, want to be branded the thinking man's Nickelback, but the soaring chorus of "Ember City" indicates that might not be all that bad a thing. But before you start lighting torches with which to subdue and slay the post-grunge construction rock abomination, try and see the beauty and sophistication of Once More 'Round The Sun Mastodon. The complex, glossy album holds a cure for what ails the fragmented world of metal. Disparate influences and that trio of distinct male voices somehow brings us listeners closer to the genre's founders and pioneers like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Led Zeppelin. To hell with unnecessary subcategorization: this is heavy metal.
Something wonderful is happening here. Can't you hear that? There are pleasures to be found in guilt, in accepting that Mastodon has emerged as the ideal epitome of metal by reuniting its scattered jewels into an Infinity Gauntlet. "Chimes At Midnight" gallops over its sturdy riffs. The title track blows gusts of wind with hurricane force. "Feast Your Eyes" carries The Melvins in its burly, hirsute arms. Once More 'Round The Sun breeds heroism, the kind that compels a man in war-battered armor to hurtle determinedly into the ominous mouth of a dragon in order to destroy it. Metal hasn't felt this genuine and liberating in so long that it almost stopped feeling true. This record has the potential to change everything.
Just don't ask me to explain whatever the hell they're singing about.