Back again, my boredom prompts three posts this week. Yay. So i thought i would review my favourite album of the year so far. Mastodon's 4th album Crack the Skye.
Mastodon have been peddling their unique brand of thrashy extreme sludge metal since the late 90's, however, have always shown a healthy amount of growth with each release. Their debut Remission was as manic as it was heavy, if a little unfocused. Leviathan saw them break through to a larger audience with much improved songwriting and
an interesting nautical theme. Their 3rd, Blood Mountain, saw them soften the vocals abit and improve their production, but for me didnt show enough growth to be equal to the first two, despite that, its still a great listen. Plus they have great facial hair.
All this could not have prepared me for the epicness of their latest concept album Crack the Skye. With a story based around a Steven Hawking style character who for some cosmic reason goes back in time and gets trapped in the body of Rasputin, one could easily thing this quite a silly premise for an album. All this fades away however once you hear the first 2 minutes of Oblivion, an absolute killer of a track full of dynamite riffing, heavy bass, Mastodons trademark insane drumming and some quite beautiful melodic lines. On this album Mastodon have opted to pretty much phase out their harsher vocals, a ballsy move from a band who has built up a loyal and very particular heavy metal following. However, it just works and allows them to inject more melody into their music while remaining heavy. The vocals sound fresh all the way through, in no small part thanks to their being 3 different vocalists in the band, a variety which gives the album the feel of some kind of epic sludge opera, which is way cool if you love sludge metal as much as i do.
The track that really hit me though was "The Czar", i think the best track they have ever written, this track shows how far they have come. Masterfully crafted, the starts out with a beautifully melodic dirge. Then the guitars kick into a riff that will rip your face off while remaining catchy as hell. Then the song falls into this psychedelic atmosphere with a massive face melter of a solo and it ends where it began, with the dirge that fades away into nothing. Of course i can hardly do it justice. The best part is that every other track on the album is up near this one in quality from the catchy kick in the face that is "Divinations" to the extended progressive psychedelic noodlings of "The Last Baron", this album maintains its energy from start to finish, it is truly the first oustanding record of 2009 and itll be a hard one to beat.
Downloads:
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