Mastodon -- 'Leviathan' [review]

Mastodon
"Leviathan"
Relapse Records


Every once in a while a band comes along that demands people stand up and take notice.

Mastodon is one of those bands.

Yet, it's clear that the means to get music fans to take notice of this band is escaping people. There's a slight buzz hovering around the band in metal circles at the moment (those that don't already sing the band's praises). The sticker on the groups latest offering suggests a mix of older Metallica and Rush, but that's not it at all.

At its heart, Mastodon is a metal band, but it's impossible to stick that one-word "label" on it and even come close to what the band is creating: a brutal mix of metal, southern, sludgey rock (a la Clutch or Corrosion of Conformity) and mind-bending, complex, technical music mastery.

There's so many layers to the band's sound, hearing each song time after time is a continuous journey of discovery. Within the confines of each track, which range in length from two to four minutes with one whopping 13 plus minute song, the band throws multiple time changes out, morphing from one style to the next, without missing a beat.

Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor is a venerable beast behind the kit, leaving listeners' heads spinning with the various fills and breakdowns from moment to moment. Troy Sanders works off Dailor nicely. Rarely following the guitarists, he lays down tracks that accompany the drumming to the fullest. Guitarist/vocalists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher play off each other tremendously, with solid, heavy riffing that can give way to melodic interludes while still maintaining a certain air of urgency that propels the music forward throughout the album. The vocals are the final piece to this complex puzzle. And, while it's safe to say of any band, the vocals are as important to the Mastodon sound as any instrumentation -- they drift from husky groans to deathly screams to straight-forward rocking prose in the least jarring of fashion.

The album itself seems loosely based on the tale of Moby Dick, right down to the cover art and song titles ("I Am Ahab," "Seabeast"). But, much like the book, the tales woven through the songs can be taken at many different levels -- like Ahab, we all have our own beast to track down.

The album explodes from the get-go with "Blood and Thunder." Dailor immediately goes to work with his intricate drumming and never seems to let up. Clutch's Neil Fallon shows up on this track to add his own flair to the vocals. And later on, Scott Kelly (he of Neurosis) helps out on vocals during "Aqua Dementia."

The complex nature of the music works two-fold here: a song like "I Am Ahab," that clocks in at a little under three minutes, feels like an epic, while "Hearts Alive," the nearly 14 minute masterpiece, seemingly goes by in the blink of an eye. Hinds and Kelliher's genre-bending riffing throughout this song (and the album as a whole) is one of the group's many spotlights.

It's clear, in the end, the only thing the band really needs for anyone and everyone to stand up and take notice, is for only a few seconds of time, a few bars of a song, a moment in your life ... just to hear the littlest output from the band ... and you'll be hooked. That is all it will take for you to see the brilliance hiding, packaged in this "metal band."