Track By Track Duty Attack: Mastodon's Crack The Skye

Since I don't give a hoot about lyrics and the meaning behind this stuff, I don't have to worry about trying to figure out what the fuck Mastodon is trying to do with their new record Crack The Skye. Wormholes? Stephen Hawking? Russian Czars? Who cares! More time for air bass. Let's get to it:

Oblivion

Acckkk! Clean vocals! Hey, everybody's got to feed their family. The best chorus the band has written, and probably ever will.

Divinations

The obvious first single does a nice job of bridging the gap from Blood Mountain's direct assault approach to Crack The Skye's space jam aspirations. Love the wacky guitar tone on the solos and the vocal style Brent Hinds uses on the verses. Dude sounds crazy.

Quintessence

This song is Leviathan lite. It's got all the proggy elements mixed with some big guitar riffs to close things out, but without the grunt and gruffs of their waterlogged classic. And any prog-rocker has to have some keyboard action. Hopefully this chick will get a shot at as their touring keytarist.

The Czar

A barrage of classic rock riffage sandwiched between John Carpenter-eque slow jams. Spooky.

Ghost Of Karelia

Listen to that tasty bass on the verses. These dudes are amazing. Any band that can make me to do "air everything" on a song has got my attention.

Crack The Skye

By far the heaviest song on the album and Scott Kelly from Neurosis gets all the good screamin' parts. Kelly being on a Mastodon album is becoming a tradition, and he gets a much bigger role here. The must have need someone who's still really pissed do some croakin' to make up for the rest of the record.

The Last Baron

Since the album leaked with only the first six tracks, I had spun the rest of the disc about 100 times before hearing this epic closing track. It's going to take awhile before it all starts to flow together. I would have preferred something closer to the slow burn of "Hearts Alive" as a closer, this song is all over the place. I'm sure it'll make more sense once I listen to the complete album more.

Final Thoughts

How about that! A concept record that has no boring interlude bullshit parts and clocks in at only 50 minutes! That is how it is done. This album should put Mastodon in that rare category of a "metal" band that can go anywhere they want with their material and fans should follow.

I've always thought this band was heavy metal version of The Who. Four amazing musicians who wow with their solo prowess but somehow come together to form a unified attack. Whoa, that's sort of like Voltron. So there you go. The Who = Mastodon = Voltron. You heard it here first.