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heavy |
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With a singular style and willingness to vary their line of attack, the members of Mastodon are in a league of their own. With a song like “March of the Fire Ants,” the highlight of their last album, Remission, a stoner riff melds into a pummelling of drumbeats, bellowed vocals, shringing guitars, and even an actual melody here and there. The song thunders along before switching into a baroque passage, morphing into a straight rock’n’roll section, and then back to plenty-o’-pummel. While there is no shortage of heavy heavy bands out there that try to intimidate with scary logos, too much black hair dye, and Cookie Monster grindcore vocals, Mastodon is singular in its own particular intense brand of sturm und drang, even letting a glint of humor shine in with a cinematic dialogue sample or two. While the group’s first EP, Life’s Blood, on Relapse records, demonstrated that they could be as loud or as hard as anybody else, their live show and first LP (Remission) set them apart. Now, the band is readying the release of Leviathan, due out in late summer on Relapse, and doing a little one-week Midwestern tour. Mastodon formed back in January 2000 when drummer Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher left Relapse Records stalwart Today is the Day and moved down to Georgia. They met up with bassist Troy Sanders and guitarist Brent Hinds and clicked so well that the band formed within a couple weeks, Sanders says. After relentless touring, racking up over 300 gigs, the band even got a track on the first compilation put out by the resuscitated Headbanger’s Ball on MTV2. They wound up hosting the show in February. The video Mastodon had been requested to submit was put into rotation and played a coupla dozen times. Mastodon made it to Michigan earlier this year, opening for Clutch, even getting as far north as Traverse City. With no disguising the awe and bewilderment in his voice, Sanders tells of seeing six-foot-high snowdrifts and people using parasails to pull around sleds and snowboards on the frozen Great Lake. Mastodon has toured Europe three time, opening up for the likes of Sepultura and Iron Maiden. When telling of their two shows in Iceland, Sanders describes it as “like another planet...most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen.” The band made it to the island country right on the longest day, when they could leave the show at 2 a.m. and find the sun still shining. The experience of playing Iceland affected the band so much that they wrote a song about it, recording it as the lead-off track on the new record. Talking about their next album, Sanders describes the new material as having a “more compact delivery to it. Everything is just extremely hard-hitting, very open and upfront. Chewable. You can sink your teeth into it when you hear this one. There’s a lotta melody, and they’re just heavy. Heavy with melody, like a good Melvins album.” The songwriting duties fall mostly to Dailor and Hinds, with the rest of the band bringing something when needed. They wrote Leviathan in two months last year, after spending the rest of the time on tour. “I finally understand when they say you have five years to write your first album, and a lotta times you’ll have three months to write your second album,” Sanders says. Their live show this summer will consist of a lot of old material, since despite the band’s familiarity with the playing the old songs for 300+ show, they’re still loving it, still heavy as hell. With the amount of growth shown by Mastodon between their first two releases, and the overwhelming response to their live act, crazy amounts of success seem destined for this band. A2P Mastodon
will be playing at the Blind Pig on April 30th, with Rune, Human
Wick Effect, and Headache.
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