(This review originally appeared on Spin.com, Monday, 4/13/09)
(UPDATE: apparently, this review inspired the one that appears on Spin. I’m not sure where mine fell apart, using their old reviews as guidelines, but apparently they didn’t dig my style. C’est la vie, eh? At least I got my name on a national mag’s website.)
(I also want to note, because I’m clever: I really, really wanted to work the nicknames “Black Floyd” and – as suggested by my friend Eric Macomb – “Widespread Sabbath” into the review, but I couldn’t work them in without some level of awkward. But Mastodon really have created a new niche in heavy music, and they are cementing it with this tour. If Roger Waters joined Metallica, and then they all took lessons from Dream Theater, and hired Ozzy Osbourne to sing for them, you’d have Mastodon. Put that into the bodies of guys in their thirties that play with the energy and brutality of hungry eighteen year olds and you’ve got Mastodon live. I can’t recommend this tour highly enough — GO SEE MASTODON.)
Maybe Mastodon is taking a chance or breaking boundaries by performing their latest album, Crack The Skye, in order from start to finish; maybe not. It certainly works, though, delivering less of an ordinary concert and more a theatrical experience, well worth the hype that their fans are giving the idea.
The two openers of the night, Intronaut and Kylesa, both delivered fine performances that deserve note, but frankly, Mastodon’s two hours of brutal, manic delivery of both the new and an excellent selection of older material erased any impression of what came before. The entire band (especially hometown guitarist Brent Hinds) attacked the songs with a ferocity one might attribute to a hungry bar band getting it’s first shot at opening a major arena show, never once giving the impression that it’s “just a job” – if heavier music is your choice of expression, then there’s a thing or two you can learn from Mastodon in the delivery.
It might have been that the Birmingham show was the opener of the tour; perhaps it was that the audience crammed into the 450-person capacity WorkPlay theater consisted in no small part of Hinds’ friends from high school and later (a bartender suggested that Hinds’ guest list brought the crowd 100 people into the Fire Marshal’s nightmares). Whatever the case, the energy levels in the building were absolutely off-the-charts. If Mastodon can manage to keep this sort of adrenaline-fueled intensity for the entire tour, it will be impressive, to say the least.
The band opened with the first notes of OBLIVION, the opening track of Crack the Skye, and as they’ve promised in pre-tour interviews, didn’t stop until they had played through the epic THE LAST BARON. A video screen behind the band played video images that managed to enhance the performance without ever distracting. While there were a few moments where it appeared that the band members were still adjusting to the live nuances of the new material, the playing (both individually and as a unit) was jaw-dropping. Mastodon’s music is technical and precise, impressive enough in a controlled studio environment but simply astounding to see over the course of an evening without second takes. Especially of note was the seemless interplay between guitarists Hinds and Bill Kelliher, and the metronome-precise rhythm of drummer Brann Dailor and bassist Troy Sanders – any musicians in the crowd that fail to be impressed with the abilities of are too elitist to listen to.
A short but necessary break followed the Crack the Skye performance, and the band returned to the stage for an encore that would more precisely be called a second act, over an hour of songs culled from their earlier albums. This set drew most heavily from Blood Mountain, but included enough from Leviathan (and one track from Remission) that it could fairly be called a Mastodon sampler. It was in this hour that the contrast between random songs and a front-to-back album performance revealed itself. There’s a comfort level in hearing a full album, one that allows you to fully immerse yourself in the music, no matter how loud or intense. The more chaotic nature of the heavy metal fan, the shirtless mosher and the screaming, goat-throwing observer at the back of the room, is so much more noticeable (and louder) when you don’t know what song is next.
Mastodon and their fans deserve a hearty commendation for putting on a spectacular show with such high energy. If the rest of the tour is even comparable to the opening night, Mastodon will cement their place at the top of the list of important metal bands, hopefully challenging others in the genre to meet their standards.
SETLIST:
1st set
Oblivion
Divinations
Quintessence
The Czar
Ghost of Karelia
Crack The Skye
The Last Baron
2nd set
Bladecatcher
Colony of Birchmen
The Wolf Is Loose
Crystal Skull
Capillarian Crest
Seabeast
Iron Tusk
March of the Fire Ants
Hearts Alive
