Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Mastodon
Label: Reprise Records
Release: 2011
Duration: 73:40
Rating: 4.8/5
Ever since the years leading up to the end of the old millennium and the step into the new one of our era, the world has been laid on the anvil, where the hammer of mental and existential change pounds away mercilessly, and the age of naivety is long gone. What remains are epically huge, still unanswered questions, through which humankind sheds its old, too-tight frames and molts into a form less weighed down by form. A reflection of that lightness is the whole plethora of sounds now permitted within the boundaries of music and its genres, and the new aesthetic is picking up big names too, who, Dalí-style, pour their mental images into chalices and scatter them wildly among the masses. The heralds of the new age and of evolution (or revolution, whatever) are everywhere, and the most successful orators, the ones who drown out the worn-out spook show, unite the young and spur on dynamic action and cognition, are without a doubt the icons of music, with the hardest-hitting ones still found within the heavy metal genre. The titans of metal, Mastodon, have so far forged their path with four hugely acclaimed albums, loved by critics and crowds alike, on which they dissected the four basic elements of nature with surgical precision and breathed into them, beyond the elemental search for the very origin of the world, even deeper stories and messages. From the first moments, from the record Remission onward (and the prelude to their existence, the EP Lifesblood), the band has reached for big strides and the progressive thrills of boundless experimentation, the peak of which is the latest record, released two years ago, Crack The Skye, which many believe will be conceptually impossible to top, leaving the faithful with nothing but patience and the hope that all is not lost. That very last record holds so many mammoth riffs, which reached near-symphonic status, that few could recreate them live. Few, but not Mastodon.
Liive At Aragon is the first truly official live recording of Mastodon in their natural, onstage element. The album, sweetened with a DVD of the concert at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on October 17, 2009, documents Mastodon in the best possible light, with no needless waffle. Right before your eyes and, quite confidently, straight into your ears, the quartet from Atlanta pours out the purest proof that musical perfection exists, because, fully and without hesitation, they recreate the whole parable of the Crack The Skye story, tailored just right for the stage. The suspicion is confirmed that exceptional talents can’t resort to shortcuts, so the sound is nearly identical. The never-ending drum soloing and the thousand transitions of the phenomenal drummer Brann Dailor are in perfect harmony with the balanced guitar salvos of the tight duo Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher, while the precise bassist and singer Troy Sanders proves himself a truly worthy frontman, absolutely fitting for Mastodon. Mastodon have a chemistry that sprays off the stage and enchants the crowds, and to make the spell even more effective, the rich stage projections shoot you into interstellar space even from the safety of your own armchair at home.
The stage is flooded with haze of blue and violet light that saturates your senses and plunges your vision into a half-conscious state, while the music rocks you into a state of ease and real immersion in what’s happening onstage. Mastodon are storytellers, and the crowd in the hall, as well as the people in front of their TV screens, are cast as participants, like listeners to epic tales around Native American or Viking campfires. The soothing, healing effect of the sound is therapy not just for the band but also heals the wounded souls of those who open their souls and ears to the entire oratorio of the record Crack The Skye, which you can read more about on our pages too. The magic of soothing softness breaks after the last act of the first part of the concert, the re-conceptualization of concepts, after the phenomenal song The Last Baron. The stage ecstasy of uninterrupted play with the flames of creativity is cut off by a dive into the rich treasury of the past, and the first in a string of stage gifts to the crowd is the song Circle Of Cysquatch, which organically plants the furious concept of the element of earth, with the shrapnel of the record Blood Mountain, right on the stage. Mastodon shift into grinder gear, a bit more furious and with no taming of their passion, tearing the veils of illusion from the eyes and ears of the crowd. Salvos of riffs and the tectonic trembling of the ground, caused by the low frequencies of the bass and the drummer beating the soul out of the open drums, move mental continents. After the shootout and the conquest of the masses, the blood of the blissed-out victims is washed away with the waters of oblivion. Aqua Dementia, a song from the water-raging Leviathan, slaughters with no less intensity, so that the not-at-all-softened elemental of pure fire from the record Remission, the song Where Strides The Behemoth, can be poured into your ears. All at once you realize that everything is so sweetly connected and that there’s no unnatural difference between all the particles. The last stretch of their own repertoire is nailed down by Mother Puncher from the notorious debut, which finally cements the faith in their greatness, and as a bonus to the concert debauchery, a cover of a Melvins song, the track The Bit, roars out of the speakers. “Try some force / Try to lead / The foundling die is close determinate / Raise head and stomp the blood / I’m not even sound raide” sounds so natural and so effortless, as if Mastodon had written it themselves. In the final part, the action onstage heats up even more. Lead guitarist and the guttural part of the untamed beast, Brent Hinds, takes up a thoroughly un-rock-star position at the front of Dailor’s drums. Sanders and the calmest member of the hellish foursome, guitarist Kelliher, step to the side, and in a veil of total disconnect they demolish the last possible doubters. The horned salute of the newly awakened and reborn believers fills the whole hall. The lights go out and the intergalactic pilgrimage is over.
Actually, not quite, because the accompanying DVD offers a special extra in the form of a film interpretation of the story of the record, Crack The Skye: The Movie. The directing and production work of Roboshobo team members Joanne Shaw and Kelly Noris, who were in charge of the visuals, pours the imagery of the exceptional designer Donny Phillips into moving form. Images come alive on screen that draw on the aesthetic of black-and-white films and in their approach recall the music videos of the Smashing Pumpkins, inspired by the beginnings of celluloid dreams. It’s Phillips who is “to blame” for all the phenomenal design of Mastodon’s covers, without which the message wouldn’t cut so deep into the soul and heart. With the visuals added, Mastodon’s intercontinental missiles have, with stereograms, gained the power of nuclear warheads too. Creativity poured onto the screen has made the perfect reactive mixture for the fuel of the new generation’s soul. Listening to this record, and even more so watching it together with the DVD, doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth. The faith is strengthened, and the wish to rise higher may soon be satisfied with a test in reality. The fanfares of the heralds of the approaching musical storm have announced that we’ll soon get a taste of prehistoric metalwork in Slovenia too, and the skeptics devoted to empiricism will get genuine confirmation that megalomania and great musical deeds are not just a thing of an outlived past, but that the heavens are still opening, only once, maybe twice, in any musical generation, and this time the phenomenon goes by the name of Mastodon! Ave Mastodon, convinced and sated, we worship and salute you!
Lineup
Brann Dailor – drums, vocals, percussion
Brent Hinds – lead guitar, vocals, banjo
Troy Sanders – bass, vocals, bass synth
Bill Kelliher – guitar
Guest musician:
– Derek Mitchka – keyboards
Production
pure DV (Devin Sarno)
Track list
1. Oblivion
2. Divinations
3. Quintessence
4. The Czar:
a.) Usurper
b.) Escape
c.) Martyr
d.) Spiral
5. Ghost Of Karelia
6. Crack The Skye
7. The Last Baron
8. Circlw Of Cysquatch
9. Aqua Dementia
10. Where Strides The Behemoth
11. Mother Puncher
12. The Bit
DVD:
– Recording of the full concert at the Aragon Ballroom, 10/17/2009
– Crack The Skye: The Movie
