Mastodon Crack The Skye Vinyl Review - dealer-game87’s blog

Mastodon: Crack the Skye

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Mastodon - Crack the Skye review: Now that Crack the Skye is here, Mastodon embrace prog, stoner metal.

Mastodon demonstrates on Crack the Skye not just a commitment to prog, but to progress. Album Reviews Album Review: Daughter.

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Dating all the way back to 2001 s Lifesblood EP, and on through subsequent full-length releases -- 2002 s steamrolling Remission, 2004 s beastly Leviathan, and Ought-Six s commercial breakthrough Blood Mountain -- Mastodon have proven to be one of the most consistent metal bands around. They are simply not capable of making bad or even mediocre music, and it has gotten to the point where a great album by them is matter-of-factly. Furthermore, one might even venture to say that this Georgia-based quartet are among the top five reasons why it s good to be alive in recent years. Unfortunately, with such high achievements come equally-as-high expectations. Fans everywhere have to wonder one thing: On 2009 s Crack the Skye, can they match -- or possibly even surpass -- the excellence they captured on previous releases especially on Blood Mountain, which was not only a major-label debut, but also received high praised from fans and critics alike.

Absolutely. Blood Mountain and Crack the Skye are similar releases in that they both leave a big smile on the face of whoever hears it. That said, let it be known that the latter of the two has many unique attributes that make it the group s most ambitious and progressive work to date. Yes, its production job may sound extra-polished, but the real ground broken here comes courtesy of brilliant songwriting. First of all, only seven tracks are presented this time around, and only one of them 2 is less-than five-minutes in length, and two of them numbers four and seven reach well-past the ten-minute mark. Next, virtually all unnecessary changes in direction and tempo have now been scrapped, making the songs much more hooky and cohesive. As a result, no matter how good that aforementioned 2006 effort was, this one marks a definite step forward from it in terms of memorable guitar parts and contagious grooves.

And lastly, in a move not unlike what Gojira made on The Link in 2003 and also similar to, say, Black Sabbath s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Down s Over the Under, and Jesu s Conqueror, Mastodon opted to make these new songs substantially more progressive and psychedelic and less brutal and viscerally satisfying than anything heard before. Indeed, unlike anything heard before, these songs possess a certain concerted level of tunefulness. This is in a large part due to a large increase in the use of melodic vocals. Sure, frontman Troy Sanders unique, throaty growl remains as strong as ever, but it is now most of the time put on the back burner in favor of surprisingly accomplished proper singing. But fear not, because Mastodon s core sound - ginormous, rampaging grooves, beefy, inexorable rhythms, great, Sabbath-y, pure doom riffing, powerful and booming bass lines, and really energetic and technical drumming -- remain firmly in tact here. Hence, the new material sure doesn t skimp on heaviness. All of this considered, Crack the Skye is definitely a smashing success, the sound of a band at the top of their game, and, in this reviewer s opinion, the winner for the year s absolute finest piece of heavy music.

Oblivion begins on a momentous and thunderous doom-laden note before kicking things into high gear with a stream of propulsive, buzzsaw riffs, bullying grooves, and pounding skins. It eventually transitions into soaring melodic choruses with infectious clean singing, and a batch of blistering guitar solos caps it all off. Divinations quickly follows-up a funky, banjo-plucked intro with thunderous, and near drum-roll-esque drumming, hard-hitting guitars, and big, fat, chugging rhythms. An excellent, wailing solo crops up here, too. Next up, Quintessence has the record s most basic and predictable song structure, making it probably the simplest song you will find here. But that doesn t mean it s bad by any means. It skilfully trades off harmonic twin guitar leads, and Brann Dailor s deft, up-tempo, and jazzy drumming, with heavy, guitar-driven segments i.e. crunchy, rollicking, Sabbath/Wolfmother-like, hard rock-flavored guitar leads, a distorted bass bottom, and lumbering rhythms and occasional dreamy acoustic breaks. And in a final unexpected twist, Sandoval tosses in some cool robotic vocals to end. Track four, The Czar, is nearly eleven minutes long, and is broken up into four parts: Usurper, Escape, Martyr, and Spiral. And even though it is one epically epic and indisputably multi-faceted number, it could not flow more seamlessly from one part to another. Nice, lightly-picked guitar melodies looming overhead a relaxed, crashing drum beat making it initially rather tranquil and ambient. However, Mastodon s patented heaviness lurks just around the corner: a rip-roaring groove, fiery, thrashy guitars and fast, flowing bass lines storm onto the scene around four-minutes in, greeting the listener like a kick to the noggin. And then, sans for an unexpected melodic breakdown around , and a subsequent unorthodox guitar solo section, the remainder of the tune plays like an Alice in Chains cover.

Then comes my personal favorite, Ghost of Karelia, which is highlighted by amazing crescendo. It builds from a grungy-sounding bass intro into towering climax composed of excellent, carefully-calculated sludge riffage, dense, churning rhythms, tight and precise drumming including ample punishing double bass work, and strong bass lines that grumble from below. An effective bit of crooning is tossed into the mix, and it works as a very nice contrast to the heavy music. But unlike most songs on Crack the Skye, in Ghost of Karelia, Sanders primarily focuses on using the same harsh, guttural style that he used on earlier material. The result is another chorus that is guaranteed to rattle around your head for quite some time. Plus, his dissonant snarls of lines like holding skulls and bulls bloodshot eyes are also really cool and get tattooed to your brain after just one listen. Although the vocal melody in the title track is not one of Mastodon s strongest, it is made-up for with ample heavy, doomy, chug and churn guitar licks, and thick, crunching rhythms that evoke vintage High on Fire, as well as a few blazing solos and well-placed harmonies. Finally, set closer, The Last Baron, marries brisk, Slayer-esque riffs, pummeling rhythms, and a Crowbar-by-way-of-Neurosis-style groove with several math-y tempo changes, some proggy fretboard noodling, and even a few keyboard flourishes.

In brief, this is yet another excellent instalment in Mastodon s already amazing and nearly untouchable discography. But hey, what were you expecting. They have already established themselves as a truly great band, and one of the most preeminent metal acts of the 21st Century. And as long as they keep knocking masterpieces out of the park like this, the Skye is the limit.

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Find album reviews, stream songs, Find album reviews, stream songs, credits and award information for Crack the Skye - Mastodon on AllMusic - 2009.

Apr 01, 2009 Mastodon Crack the Skye Crack the Skye, By Pitchfork on January 11, 2016 at a.m. EST Features. Afterword.

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Customer Reviews

Crack the Skye red/gold vinyl 33 Crack The Skye sees Mastodon follow the Progy footsteps of Blood Moutian and goes Its seems to get pretty polarized reviews.

First off: Mastodon s album concepts are officially out of control. It s one thing to base an entire album on Herman Melville s Moby Dick, as the Atlanta band did on 2004 s amazing Leviathan. But when you re making a record about a kid who experiments with astral travel and then goes through a wormhole and meets Rasputin and Rasputin enters his body to escape assassination, or something, you ve pushed this whole thing way, way further than it needed to be pushed. I interviewed guitarist Bill Kelliher a couple of weeks back, and he sighed deeply before delving into the story, and it took him a good five minutes or so just to get through the thing. That s a bit much.

But it doesn t particularly matter how wound-up and excruciating the band s album concepts might be as long as their music kicks as hard as it does. Mastodon s music never really settles into a locked-in groove. Instead, it skips and dives and wanders. When the band switches up time-signatures, something it does often, it s not to show off math-rock chops; it s to rip the rug out from under you, to keep you uncomfortable. Crack the Skye, the band s fourth album, stays in weirdly soft midtempo churn mode more than their previous albums do, but it never lingers. Instead, it delays the gratification of the band s gigantic sunward-screaming choruses just long enough to make you wonder if they re ever coming, which makes the release that much more overwhelming when it finally arrives. The Czar, a four-part, 11-minute epic that s still only the second-longest song on the album, gargles and fumes and lurches for nearly three minutes before launching into its first glorious steamroller riffs. This band is playing with you.

The seven songs on Crack the Skye stretch over about 50 minutes, an indulgent track-length average for any band not named Opeth. But Mastodon s odysseys never feel forced or pretentious. Even on 13-minute closer The Last Baron, I never really notice the track length. Every riff and roar flows organically into the next until I m totally lost in it; hard to imagine checking the time remaining on your iPod when things get like that. In a way, Mastodon operates something like prime-era Metallica, unleashing these huge, blistering tracks that journey over peaks and valleys and ditches and oceans before leaving you spinning. It s just that Mastodon s arsenal of weapons is different; instead of demi-classical guitar interludes and blazing twin-guitar leads and thuggish hey-hey-heys, they ve got soupy quasi-jazz trundles and pigfuck distortion-explosions and quick bursts of time-honored Southern-rock melody.

First single Divinations ranks among the best things the band s ever done, a quick banjo intro into a juddering riff that whips and soars through a serious full-speed attack of a song with one of the biggest, most cathartic choruses in the band s career, then dissolves into a space-surf solo before ending in a deeply satisfying thud. I just wish the band could ve maintained that level of breathless intensity over the course of the full album, the way they did on Leviathan, still probably their best. On this one, they ve broken with Leviathan/Blood Mountain producer Matt Bayles for Springsteen/Pearl Jam collaborator Brendan O Brien. O Brien doesn t drag them kicking and screaming onto active-rock radio or anything; this is still very much a Mastodon album, with all the blistering roar that phrase has come to imply. But this one doesn t have the expansive, suffusing grime of the previous two, and the band s churn can feel a bit stretched-thin for minutes at a time. Also, Troy Sanders and Brent Hinds are singing more than ever before, rather than delivering their mythologies in vein-popped grunts the way they once did. That s not a problem in itself, but Sanders and Hinds both sing in gurgly, nauseous whines that shoot for Ozzy territory but never quite get there. When they re harmonizing eerily deep in the mix, it works. When they get closer to the top, it sometimes doesn t.

And so the most powerful moments on Crack the Skye are almost always the most direct. On the title track, Neurosis Scott Kelly shows up for a lung-busting guest-vocal, bellowing over the din of the band s complex thunder-crunch while a demonic vocodered thing screeches out a counterpoint. And near the end, Kelly growls out the most serious lyric on the whole record: Momma, don t let them drag her down/ Please tell Lucifer he can t have this one. And you remember something else the band has been saying in interviews. This isn t really the band s opus about astral travel or Rasputin or whatever; it s drummer and primary lyricist Brann Dailor s attempt to wrestle with his sister Skye s way-too-early death. If he has to conjure alternate universes to get there, it s easy to see why. And even at its most prog-tastic heights of absurdity, this band s wriggling thunder never falls apart. It just punches deeper when Mastodon drop their defenses.