[Writer and musician Tres Crow comes to us from the excellent blog Dog Eat Crow, for which I just published a Halloween-inspired list of The Top 5 Goriest Metal Album Covers of All Time. What follows is an incredible piece of creative writing written by Mr. Crow based on Mastodon's Crack the Skye. The first part ("Intro") is a true recounting of a run-in we had with Brent "Tasmanian Devil" Hinds whilst visiting Atlanta for the Scion Rock Fest. The rest is all culled from the twisted, Mastodon-induced imaginings of Tres' own mind. It is long, but worth it. Enjoy! - Ed.]
The Mastodon Beard
By Tres Crow
Intro
Before I really get into the meat and potatoes of this thing I think I need to make a little confession: I first became interested in Mastodon primarily because of Brent Hinds’ totally wicked beard. Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t any kind of creepy infatuation, like watching him shower through peepholes type of thing, but more like, let’s say, professional admiration, as in one bearded red-headed dude to another.
You see I am a man of relatively modest bearded means, and though in my chosen field of Banking I am considered a rebel for wearing facial hair so defiantly against accepted business attire and hygiene, when I first saw the tarantula legs Mr. Hinds was sporting from his chin I was totally awed.
Let me break this first meeting down for you: I’m standing in a tiny hole in the wall bar in Atlanta with the esteemed moderators of this very blog, Mssrs. Neilstein and Rosenberg, a bar which has this night been totally taken over by Metal fans of every shape and size on account of the Scion Metal Fest. I’m sipping a beer and feeling extraordinarily out of place in my bright blue rain jacket and neatly trimmed rebel-Banker beard and I keep eyeing all the khaki military jackets and black band shirts and ferocious, tousled facial mats with a mixture of wariness and wonder. Clearly I am in the midst of something extraordinary, beard-wise; from wall to wall there is the most amazing array of goatees, full-on Hemingway bushes, twisty oriental spires descending like stalactites several inches, handlebars like the Hulk used to wear (still does apparently), faces that seem to grow out from the beards instead of the other way around. Hell, there is even the occasional mustache sprinkled through the crowd for good measure. I mean, basically, the place is like a veritable Beard Convention and we’re all milling about, drinking beers and shuffling feet and exclaiming loudly about one thing or another, everyone with the unmistakable posture of someone waiting for something. It’s like we’ve all come together for a purpose that maybe not everyone even realizes what it is yet, but there’s definitely this feeling of purposeful waiting, of expectation.
And then it happens, what we’ve all been waiting for without even really knowing it. Like some kind of verbal version of the wave a rumor starts to spread throughout the tiny place: Brent Hinds is here. I crane my neck to get a glimpse of this Brent guy even though I’m not really even certain who he is.
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So I’m reading all about the “Royal Edition” of Mastodon’s Crack the Skye that’s coming out just in time for the holidays, and the above graphic from their website took me by surprise. Shipping deadlines not just for Christmas, but for Hanukkah! How considerate of those fine, southern gentlemen. I guess they want our Jew money, too.
Where the hell does the time go? The year is more than half over already! Sheesh.
