Mastodon
Leviathan
(Relapse)

Mastodon's Leviathan opens with a track called "Blood and Thunder," an appropriate metaphor for their combination of organic metal and massively hefty sound. With serious riffs ranging from utterly crushing to anthemic, with occasional acoustic breaks and one Corrosion of Conformity-type southern metal tag, Mastodon creates some of the heaviest speed metal known to man. The album features mostly songs in the 3-4 minute range, wherein bassist and vocalist Troy Sanders changes up his vocal style from guttural to barely restrained screaming, with a few songs featuring clean, multitracked vocals to provide some balance. The guitars are incredibly overdriven, bassy and pushed to the forefront of the mix; you can feel the attack of each note in your chest. No review of Leviathan would be complete without noting Brann Dailor's drumming, which calls to mind the sound of two equally heavy yet ridiculously fast bands - Slayer and the Slayer-influenced Tourniquet. A true descent into the maelstrom, Dailor will make your head swim.

Leviathan is sort of a concept album about Moby Dick, peppered with lyrics about the white whale, watery graves, and an endless bottom. Song titles include "Seabeast" and "I Am Ahab." To be fair, Mastodon also covers the Nephilim ("Naked Burn"), the Elephant Man ("Joseph Merrick"), and Norse Mythology ("Ísland"). It's in the midst of the speed palm-muting and pinch harmonic maelstrom of "Ísland" that Sanders delivers the best lyric of the album: "Beware the hammer of Thor." Simple and perfect. The effect of this is to take subjects most of us are rather ambivalent toward (Herman Melville, Odin) and create an album free of the same preceonceptions most of us have about the subject matter of metal records dealing with napalm death and morbid angels.

The sheer heaviness of the guitars combined with mythological subject matter are sure to draw comparisons to Led Zeppelin. Not that it's not unwarranted. The penultimate track, "Hearts Alive," is over 13 minutes, featuring tempo changes, the album's only guitar solo and a truly epic ending. Leviathan ends with a semi-acoustic instrumental, sounding not unlike a Zeppelin tribute from Philip Anselmo's band Down. Combining the epic sound and heaviness of Zeppelin with the epic sound and speed of Metallica condensed into three-minute bursts, Mastodon is the culmination of years of metal - both forward-looking with a huge influence from the past. Skip this album at your own peril.

-Mario


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