[genre: metal, progressive rock]
Rating:
If you’re a hard-core metal-head you’ve undoubtedly already sacrificed small mammals to the gods of Mastodon. But if Like ME, you’re into all-types of music, but have been estranged from the genre by an endless stream of Screemo noise and New-metal ear-trash of recent years- this is your chance. Crawl out from beneath your indie-stuffed hard-drives, kneel at the alter and slash thine wrists! All plebeians shall bleed! The kings have returned! behold! MASTODON!

listen:

Blood Mountain is the 3rd full-length from Atlanta’s MASTODON. The first thing you’ll notice is the drummer Brann Dailon, who must be on meth, or a combination of uppers- he just pulverizes the kit, albeit with serious virtuosity, throughout the hour or so of this EPIC album. You’ll catch the vibes of early Metallica, as well as the prog giants old and new like King Crimson and the Mars Volta (singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala makes an appearance, though he totally melts into the Shred-Sludge so you’d never know it was him). The album flows effortlessly through 12 tracks, most of which don’t crack the 4 minute mark- but you’ll swear you’ve been on 1 long psychedelic vision-quest. Plenty of tasty, shire-esque acoustic moments balance out the pummeling metal riffery, and the experimental segue-ways are anything but filler, they’re pure headphone bliss, seriously dense, multilayered textures of buzz and sizzle.

Josh Homme lends vocal talents to “Colony of Birchmen” the most straight-ahead ROCKIN track, that is until about half -way through when the wheels of syncopation grind to a stand-still, then rotate backwards, only to jerk back into the straight dope riff.

“This Mortal Soil” begins slowly with reverbed out pickin layered over harmonized leads, then busts the devil’s groove. This track sounds like if Tears for Fears ate mushrooms then stumbled onto Pantera’s stage. this is GOOD SHIT. The whole album just burns with creativity and metal goodness. Also worth mentioning: “Sleeping Giant” and the instrumental “Bladecatcher”.

FUCK “knew-Metal”. This shit is fresh, listen-able, punishing, grating, soothing, angry, story-telling, EPIC metal. Sabbath on Crack-meets-Rush-meets-CLUTCH. Fucking Awesome. If you love hard rock, and you used to be into metal but haven’t heard anything worth a shit in the last 5-10 years, Mastodon just may be the band that leads you back. Highly recommended.