Blood Mountain [U.S. Version] [CD]

I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Henry Cow amongst others. Have continued to listen to KC as they developed/progressed.

More recently been into Radiohead, Muse, Tool, The Mars Volta.

Blood Mountain initially struck me as a deranged cross between later heavy King Crimson and the post-punk metal of Motorhead. It's a sound I couldn't have even imagined in my youth. It's the sound of my youth's future.

At first, I could only grin widely at its over-the-top power, precision and inventiveness. Some bits made me laugh at Mastodon's sheer audacity and confidence. Now I know the album I'm struck by its tunefullness, its harmonised riffs, and its moods/atmospheres. And its over-the-top power, precision and inventiveness.

This album inspired me to go off on a Mastodon hunt of their previous releases, which was fantastic!

Like their critically-acclaimed previous album Leviathan, the first three tracks offer something different but still just about accessable to the interested listener. Then track four on both albums takes you to Planet Mastodon itself. Things become seriously deranged and interesting!

Blood Mountain probably works better than Leviathan overall, which is probably a good thing if a band has a "prog" label. They certainly don't want to make the same record again, a similar set of songs to tour with. They want to expand, explore, progress, push themselves. Leviathan has got some fantastic songs on it, but overall the quality of the songs on Blood Mountain is probably more consistent. They're all equally wierd/interesting in different ways.

I haven't got a clue what the various labels used these days mean (grindcore, stoner doom, etc) but if these mean something to you, then fine.

If you're not hung up about musical genres you'll probably find something to like here. It's committed. It's serious. It's playful. It's still making me grin and also it's becoming one of my favourite albums ever!

(I also love Opeth's "Ghost Reveries" - more single-minded and majestic, and The Fall's "Reformation TLC" - a punk band who were never a punk band after all)

Mastodon is the rarest kind of metal band -- a really brilliant, creative one. No posing or nu-metal appeals for radioplay here.

And after their previous brilliant albums, they reached a new apex in "Blood Mountain." The Atlanta band spins songs about a beautiful, icy land -- played in a sonic eruption of kinetic instruments and some brilliantly mythic lyrics. It's a fiery, breathtaking ride.

It opens with rapid-fire drums and a squealing guitar, with a hoarse voice shouting, "The hero of the gods/The crossing of the threshold!" But the music soon uncoils into a fast-moving hard-rocker, full of blistering riffs and surreal lyrics about gods, shapeshifters, tyrants, heroes and "hulder folk and fairies."

Then we break into the tribal drums and blazing, sludgy riffs of "Crystal Skull," which is just begging to be air-guitared. And they don't let up in the songs that follow: the darkly epic "Sleeping Giant," metal with nimbly catchy melodies, sludgy hard-rock that blazes with muscular basslines, and expanses of roaring prog-metal that races by at light speed.

No ballads. No interludes. Sure, some of these songs open with some electronic squiggling, or maybe a mellow guitar melody, but they don't take long to explode into something totally different. The only exception is "Pendelous Skin," the very last song on the album -- it's an atmospheric blend of slow-burning rock played in a more alt-rocky style.

But up until then, it's nothing but rapid-fire, headbanging proggy-rocky metal. Sludgy and/or muscular riffs, smashing bass, and blindingly rapid drums that have to be heard to be believed -- and the whole thing is tightly woven out of different styles. And this is all to make story-songs with complex, intense melodies that can change in midsong -- from epic metal to chaos, and back again -- to reflect whatever is happening.

And the world Mastodon is exploring in this just reeks of fantasy and old legends -- nature gods, wilderness, icy lands, skulls, tree people, ivory towers, one-eyed monsters, more skulls, and ancient elms. I have no idea what they're trying to communicate, but their songwriting is definitely atmospheric ("A vast calm wilderness/The call to adventure comes/Lead and land atop this rock/Infinite path carved with unrivaled skill...")

Mastodon's "Blood "Mountain" is a devastatingly, frighteningly mythic experience, like wandering through an ancient legend. Here's hoping this band only gets better with time.

Diverse is the way to describe this beast. It has definitely progressed the band and the music has evolved into a less driven, grinding form to a more fluid chugging and rythmic sound. It reminds me in many places of Ol' Nessie and has some beautiful touches. You can certainly feel the Stoner roots and also elements of prog (dare I say it). The guitars are sharper and have more treble, the bass gives rythm not thunder and the vocals are less scream/shouted for the most part but are quite abstract in their way.

Mastodon are extremely deft musicians and it is very apparent on this new album. Tempo and time changes are seamless and you get the feeling they could easily play all of this live as the are no obvious knob twiddles going on!

All tracks stand out but it is the bizarre almost Faith No More influenced Capillarian Crest and the wied Hawaian guitar beginning to the song Blade catcher followed by what can only be described as demented scratching and then a great solid mogodon riff which whirls and flies like a wounded hawk with really no vocals!

A superb album which cannot be genre typed or pigeonholed. Heavy but groovy..a must have!