Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Old Fart's opinion, 6 Mar 2007
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)
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
5*..its a Mastodon album how can it be bad??, 31 Aug 2006
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!
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Believe the hype!, 2 Oct 2006
This being the third album from one of the most widely acclaimed metal bands in recent years - and their first for a major label - it is highly gratifying to report that 'Blood Mountain' more than meets the expectations. In light of the praise heaped upon the Atlanta quartet following 2004's 'Leviathan', it was always going to be interesting to see where they went next...
Put simply, this is astonishing: preposterously technical, crushingly heavy and underpinned by a sense of groove that will have fans of the sorely-missed Kyuss grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. In fact, there are moments on 'Blood Mountain' at which you can really only laugh, such is the sheer 'what-the-f***?!' brilliance of their delivery.
Musically, 'Blood Mountain' aims in all directions, and in this respect it's more akin to 'Remission' than 'Leviathan'; nevertheless there is a discernible method to the madness which gives the album a necessary cohesion. At the same time, each and every song has its own distinct character (see the Queens of the Stone Age-esque 'Colony of Birchmen' or the demented blues of 'Circle Cysquatch') and this combination of exquisite individuality and broad-minded accessibility makes Mastodon - and in particular, 'Blood Mountain' - an utterly irresistable proposition for any self-respecting metal fan...
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