Mastodon "Blood Mountain" (Warner Bros.)
By Eric Chon
Tuesday. Sep 12, 1:26 PM
Best album of the year?

From the first frenetic volleys of Brann Dailor’s frenzied drums on “The Wolf is Loose,” you know you’re in for a treat. This is Mastodon at their most insane. And just when you think all control is lost, Brann and co-conspirators Brent Hinds (guitars/vocals), Bill Kelliher (guitars), and Troy Sanders (bass/vocals) reel it back in, giving you only a glimpse of madness. Follow-up track “Crystal Skull” is a perfect companion, with its bombastic rhythms and angular riffs creating a wall of destructive force. Both are the logical next-steps to Mastodon’s previous masterpiece Leviathan: building on the sheer intensity and thick riffage displayed there. But once “The Sleeping Giant” hits, it’s suddenly a whole different ball game.

A mix of complex drums and intricate guitar, Mastodon are starting to show their progressive side, layering melodies and harmonies like it’s the only natural thing to do. Haunting and angular guitars build and crescendo at a feverish rate, as the music becomes increasingly intense and manic.

Much like how Leviathan recalled Moby Dick, Blood Mountain (named after the highest peak on Georgia’s portion of the Appalachian Trail, perhaps?) tells the story of a man climbing said mountain in search of a crystal skull, which he hopes to place atop the mountain. According Dailor, “It’s about climbing up a mountain and the different things that can happen to you when you’re stranded on a mountain, in the woods and lost. You’re starving, hallucinating, running into strange creatures. You’re being hunted. It’s about that whole struggle.”

And yes, listening to Blood Mountain is akin to going mad. There are so many elements at work, so many disparate genres being smashed together, that the only way to really describe it is to say that they have gone brutally progressive. Imagine the intricate and extremely technical work of bands like Textures or even Dream Theater, and then mix in equal parts Neurosis, Sleep, and Nasum, and you might be getting close to the audio-heroics on display (funny enough, Neurosis vocalist Scott Kelly lends his pipes to a track, as well as Cedric Bixler-Zavala of The Mars Volta and Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age).

I never thought it would be possible to get more epic than Leviathan, but somehow these metalheads from Georgia managed to outdo themselves yet again. Their inventiveness and absolute dementia is only matched by fellow disturbed genius Devin Townsend. While some will lament their straying from the brutally crushing sounds of Remission, the rest of us will realize that a band this talented would never be content rehashing the same thing over and over again.

Mastodon have released an album that must be heard to be believed. Blood Mountain is an apt name, as this record is a gigantic accomplishment for a band who have already achieved so much. Pure brilliance.
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Eric Chon

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