If you ask any true music fan, they’ll more than likely be able to identify that one glorious moment where they heard a song, and everything just clicked for them. All it takes is to stumble across one artist, and bang, you’re off on a liftimes worth of musical discovery.
For me, that time was back in 2006, and that discovery was Mastodon. At the time, I was just beginning to get into music, leaning on more mainstream acts like Rage Against The Machine, Foo Fighters, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and *ahem* The Streets. As with most young rock fans, Kerrang was my bible (despite it’s over reliance on the Emo explosion of the time), and it was one of their mixed CD’s that I was exposed to this track – ‘Crystal Skull’.
From Brann Dailor’s echoing tribal tom assault to the winding riffs that propel you into the bowels of Blood Mountain, through to Scott Kelly’s (of Neurosis fame, and a frequent collaborator with the Masto-boys) razor edged howl, everything about this track blew me away, and opened up my eyes to the world of metal as a whole. The next time I was in my local record shop, I eagerly snapped up both Blood Mountain and their preceding album, 2004’s Leviathan.
If Blood Mountain had opened my eyes, Leviathan ripped off my eyelids and forced me to stare unblinkingly into the watery abyss of what was being called ‘Whale-core’. The breakneck riffs of guitarists Brent Hinds and (the criminally underrated) Bill Kelliher are sharper and more righteous here than on anything that the band issued before or since, and combined with Dailor’s rapid, fill heavy drumwork and bassist Troy Sander’s smoky vocal rasp, come together to create one of the best releases of the 21st century so far. The sprawling, tidal shifts of the epic ‘Hearts Alive’ are a perfect example of everything that’s right about the record.
Working back to their debut album Remission (although their Lifesblood compilation contains their earliest stuff, it’s a little too manic and rough to really satisfy my riffy cravings) sees an even more fierce beast than on Leviathan. Arguably less focused, but more aggressive, it sees a younger band exercising their demons on record. The contentiously-titled ‘Mother Puncher’ is not only my favourite song here, but is my favourite song full stop. From the gnarly, sludgy opening riff to the final, locked-tight break down, it’s furious and cathartic, and whenever I’ve seen it aired live it’s made me scream like a girl with excitement.
But Mastodon were still pushing themselves, and still innovating, well into the late 2000’s. 2009 saw them release their prog masterpiece, Crack The Skye, an album that won them both media praise and fan recognition far beyond that that they’d previously achieved. It was the turning point in their career; a record where they indulged in their influences more (Thin Lizzy, Rush, King Crimson and Genesis to name but a few) and wrote an album free of any expectations but their own. It was a cathartic experience for both Mastodon and their fans, and the following tours/live album where they played CTS in its entirety saw them at the height of their powers.
And, for me anyway, that’s where my obsession with the Atlantan foursome somewhat petered out. Maybe my tastes changed (I followed some of their influences, like Neurosis, down a dark and twisting rabbit hole leading to more doomy depths) or maybe the band’s change in direction saw them lose the ‘spark’ that had attracted me to them. While their two more recent records, The Hunter in 2011 and Once More ‘Round the Sun in 2014, have continued to grab praise and cement their position as one of the foremost bands in modern metal, they are a little too scattershot, a little too ‘light’ to truly satisfy me the way their back catalogue does. That said though, I will never tire of seeing them live, because when they crank out the old standards like ‘Blood and Thunder’ and ‘March Of The Fire Ants’ , they are still full of furious, primal energy, and are truly untouchable.
How I felt about Mastodon when I first heard them, that joyous moment of clarity, of true understanding, well, maybe that will never quite happen in the same way again. But I’ll keep searching for it. It’s my white whale.
