Mastodon: For Those About To Rock We Salute You

Mastodon

Academy 1, Manchester, February 20, 2010

Duke Ellington said there are only two genres of music: good, and the other kind. He wasn’t wrong. Mastodon aren’t merely a metal band, they’re simply one of the best rock ’n’ roll bands around today.

The slow grinding chords of Oblivion, the first song of the set, and the opening track of Crack The Skye, their most recent album, are greeted with an orgasmic cheer. Brann Dailor’s drumming getting gradually more intense, building a sense of impending doom, before the eventual release when the track bursts into glorious life. The all-consuming noise is so mesmerising that only a small mosh pit forms, with everyone else left slack-jawed in awe.

The rest of the record follows in its entirety. It’s heavy, daring, progressive and downright adventurous music. The songs are complex and densely layered, but what stands out is they are, ultimately, wholly listenable, accessible and deeply satisfying. As well as being aurally sating the night is a visual feast, with the eyes greedily gobbling up everything on offer. Brent Hinds’ playing is stunning; mixing dizzying picking and soaring melodies, as his and Bill Kelliher’s dual guitars unleash hell. Troy Sanders vocals are guttural, yet crystal clear, but it’s Dailor’s propulsive, polyrhythmic percussion that is the blazing highlight, keeping the whole performance watertight, and ballasted.

Above all this, a huge screen shows a bizarre film telling the story of Crack The Skye. You know, it’s the classic tale: paraplegic boy has an out-of body experience, flies too close to the sun, his spirit being summoned to Tsarist Russia by Rasputin before he’s assassinated (Rasputin, not the boy), leaving him to find his way back home.

The Last Baron is insane; the high point in a gig full of them. It closes the set with a 15-minute odyssey that changes tempo and time signatures with abandon.

After a couple of minutes Mastodon return to the stage and plough through their back catalogue, with songs from Blood Mountain and Leviathan rattling by at break-neck speed. As nerve shattering as they are, it also shows how far the band has progressed, and hints at the future. The possibilities are frightening.



*Photographs courtesy of Frank Ralph, used with permission
*Review originally for The Fly and can be viewed here.