MetalSucks

So in case you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, or this is simply your first visit to Metal=eh, we’ve been sharing our views on the 21 “best” metal albums of this millennium (according to an esteemed panel of metal industry yahoos), and lo and behold — an amazing album by an amazing band topped the list.

Commencing with arguably the “best” (or at least “most metal”) opening lyrics of any album this century (”I think that someone is trying to kill me….it’s infecting my blood and destroying my mind…”), Mastodon’s epic yet grounded Leviathan ascends above the crop of proto-prog-thrashsters throughout every song, and the range of jamz feels both balanced and diverse, all the while sounding like the same album from start to finish — not an easy feat.

For me, it was always the first and last tunes off this album that exhibit the most, ahehhahem, heart (and of course “Iron Tusk” totally rips……..ROAR).

MASTODON — “Hearts Alive”, from ["best" 21st century album] Leviathan (2004)

-KW

OH, C’MON. YOU KNEW IT WASN’T REALLY ICP.

We recently polled a wide array of musicians, managers, publicists, label reps, and writers from within the world of metal to find out what they thought the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century So Far have been. Eligible albums were released between January 1, 2000 and April 1, 2009. Each panelist turned in a ballot, with their #1 album worth 21 points, their #2 album worth 20 points, and so on and so forth. The ballots are now in and we’ll be counting down one album a day until we reach #1. Today we present the #1 album, coming in with a total of 320 points…

Mastodon, Leviathan (Relapse, 2003)
Troy Sanders — Bass, Vocals
Brent Hinds — Guitars, Vocals
Bill Kelliher — Guitars
Brann Dailor — Drums
Produced by Matt Bayles and Mastodon

“Deedily-deedily-doo” might be as instantly recognizable as any Mastodon riff, but the guitar riff that starts Leviathan album-opener “Blood & Thunder” is THE quintessential Mastodon riff. Riff; repeat; queue one of Brann Dailor’s graceful, rolling drumfills and it’s fucking ON. An album full of fire, fury, aggression; punk, metal; post-hardcore riffage, classic metal guitar leads; distinctly Mastodonian gruff vocals. On Leviathan, Mastodon infused their hardcore roots with more metal and more prog; it’s the album on which Mastodon became Mastodon.

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We recently polled a wide array of musicians, managers, publicists, label reps, and writers from within the world of metal to find out what they thought the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century So Far have been. Eligible albums were released between January 1, 2000 and  April 1, 2009. Each panelist turned in a ballot, with their #1 album worth 21 points, their #2 album worth 20 points, and so on and so forth. The ballots are now in and we’ll be counting down one album a day until we reach #1. Today we present the #13 album, coming in with a total of 138 points…

Mastodon, Blood Mountain (Warner Bros., 2006)
Troy Sanders — Bass, Vocals
Brent Hinds — Guitars, Vocals
Bill Kelliher — Guitars
Brann Dailor — Drums
Produced by Matt Bayles and Mastodon

I guess dudes were nervous about Mastodon’s third album, Blood Mountain, ‘cuz it was the quartet’s first for Warner Bros Records. Which is kinda goofy since all the greatest, most epic-est concept albums are major label affairs. And beardy production aside, Blood Mountain fits right in among those records, and not a moment too soon. It sounds to me like two Sepultura cover bands on opposite sides of a basement, one (inexplicably) playing Voivod’s Nothingface and the other Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (for some reason). It has the former’s freakishly dynamic riffs and exoticism, the latter’s epic arc and devastating instrumental passages. All three albums share a pervasive and baldly cinematic sense of time passing; Blood Mountain shoots from a canon (“The Wolf Is Loose”) and ends 50 minutes/several days later with a mournful closing credits sequence (“Pendulous Skin”). By that point, our hero (whom we all visualize as guitarist/singer Brent Hinds, right?) has been swallowed by the mountain or encased in ice or raped by a tree. The listener has been through only slightly less.

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This week in Soundscan, supergroup Chickenfoot shifted a ridiculous number of records. I’m baffled too. Elsewhere, Iron Maiden had a solid debut and bands like Nickelback, Hollywood Undead, Shinedown, Slipknot, and Metallica continued on with business as usual.

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So I just watched Faith No More’s Download Fest perf. I only saw one pair of boobies, and they were terrible boobies. On the other hand, FNM killed it and played “Take This Bottle” and Patton did part of “We Care A Lot” while doing sit-ups with the mic in his mouth, so ya take the good with the bad.

Speaking of the good with the bad: we started to unveil the results of our 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century… So Far poll/list this week, and as usual, y’all had something to say about it:

• SP420 thinks it’s “unbelievable that so many people hold” the #17 album, Hatebreed’s Perseverance, “in such high regard.” Sp420, Jamey Jasta will be at your house in one hour to discuss.
• ionlanach thinks that the #18 album, Lamb of God’s New American Gospel, is “Mediocre, just like everything Lamb of God have ever done.” Even Randy Blythe’s BBQ sauce is offended
• I hate you thinks that if the #19 album, Mastodon’s Remission, “was your first metal album, you are gay” and that “metal is obviously not your fortay.” In other news, I hate you doesn’t know how to spell “forté” correctly.
• Fufkin calls the #20 album, Shadows Fall’s The War Within, “metalbore.” While I don’t agree with him (her?), that’s just clever enough for me not to make fun of Fufkin.
• Robert thinks that the #21 album, Slipknow’s Vol 3: The Subliminal Verses, is “sort of a pile of shit.” Which leads me to wonder: at what point does something go from being “sort of” a pile of shit to, y’know, an actual pile of shit?

Next week we’re countin’ down albums #16 through #12. The picks are clearly either gonna make you guys really fuckin’ happy or really fuckin’ mad. I’ll give you a hint, though: they’re all metal albums.

-AR

DBR’s ace comment on our 19th Best Metal Album of the 21st Century… So Far (Mastodon’s Remission, for those keeping score at home) made me chuckle:

I remember hearing “March of the Fire Ants” for the first time on a Headbanger’s Ball compilation when I was a teenager and even though it took me a while to realize I actually liked it, that riff would get stuck in my head for days.

deedily deedily doo, deedily deedily doo, etc.

Deedily deedily doo; dead on, amirite???

It also got me thinkin’. What other metal onomatopoeias are there that are absolutely instantly recognizable? Aside from the obvious classics (”Smoke on the Water,” “Iron Man,” etc). So let’s play a little game here. Post your phonetic representation of a metal riff as a comment but do NOT post the name of the band or song — then let other commenters guess what song it is in the replies to that specific comment (yay threaded comments!). Go!

-VN

SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER BEN APATOFF OF APATOFF FOR DESTRUCTION & METAL INJECTION

We recently polled a wide array of musicians, managers, publicists, label reps, and writers from within the world of metal to find out what they thought the 21 Best Metal Albums of the 21st Century So Far have been. Eligible albums were released between January 1, 2000 and  April 1, 2009. Each panelist turned in a ballot, with their #1 album worth 21 points, their #2 album worth 20 points, and so on and so forth. The ballots are now in and we’ll be counting down one album a day until we reach #1. Today we present the #19 album, coming in with a total of 109 points…

Mastodon, Remission (Relapse, 2002)
Brann Dailor – Drums
Brent Hinds – Guitars/Vocals
Bill Kelliher – Guitars
Troy Sanders – Bass/Vocals
Produced by Matt Bayles

Mastodon’s first album erupts with a sound bite from Jurassic Park before unleashing twelve auditory beasts that absolutely wipe the floor with any CG Tyrannosaurus Rex.  From hectic, abrasive mathcore (“Crusher Destroyer”) to spacey, slow-building epics (“Trainwreck”) to a monolithic Thin Lizzy cover (“Emerald,” worth tracking down on the re-release,) four then-unknown southerners who’d barely discovered clean vocals already sounded like they could pull off everything.

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When Axl and I were in our formative years of MTV watching, Tool were the absolute undisputed kings of bad-ass music videos. Guitarist Adam Jones — a pro animator in his pre-Tool life — worked on the videos for “Sober” and “Prison Sex” with director Fred Stuhr (who also did Green Jelly’s “Three Little Pigs”), and Jones carried the torch on his own from thereon out with eye-pleasing, head-trippy gem after eye-pleasing, head-trippy gem.

In 2009 music videos certainly don’t carry the weight they used to, but whereas Tool have all but stopped releasing videos, a record deal with Warner Bros. has left the lads of Mastodon as the beneficiary of some pretty hefty video budgets, allowing the band the creative freedom to take drummer Brann Dailor’s hair-brained conceptual album schemes to their full-blown visual realizations. We had the eery, sci-fi social commentary of Blood Mountain’s “Sleeping Giant,” the epic cave man shreddery of this year’s “Divinations,” and now this, a trippy, space-age freakout adventure for “Oblivion,” the first track from this year’s spectacular masterpiece Crack the Skye. What’s great is that — like Tool — Mastodon’s videos all share a common look and feel and all seem to tie together in some loose way. This is more than just random eye candy; it actually means something. As to whether you can or think you can parse Dailor’s actual intended meaning is another question, but again, like Tool… Mastodon keep you guessing.

-VN

After the jump, check out those “Sleeping Giant” and “Divinations” videos.

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I don’t usually like to post these so-called “trailers” for upcoming metal videos because I just find the idea of a 30 second trailer for a three or four minute video just too silly for words. But I just saw this “trailer” for the new Mastodon video for the totally awesome song “Oblivion,” and I’m already more excited for this than I am for most of the big summer movies that still have yet to be released.

Holy shit, this just looks like it’s gonna be so much fun. I can’t wait.

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

Hey all, its been a while since I’ve updated this blog. We’ve been super busy over the past few months, most recently with the tour we just finished with Mastodon and Kylesa. This was without a doubt one of the most awesome tours we have ever been a part of. I’d like to publicly thank everyone in Mastodon and their crew for going out of their way to be helpful and make us feel welcome. It’s nice to see that all the success hasn’t jaded you guys. It was also a pleasure to meet and bro down with Kylesa for five weeks. I hope we can all do this again some time.

Here are some highlights:

Click to read more…

Holy shit, has everyone already seen Mastodon’s performance from The Late Show with David Letterman last week? I mean, I love Mastodon – LOVE THEM – but fuck me, the vocals on this just sound horrible. I couldn’t even make it through the whole thing, it sounds so shitty. I knew that Mastodon’s vocals live never sound as good as they do on record, but this is just fucking PAINFUL.

-AR

So, Mastodon have been touring small venues in the U.S. playing Crack the Skye (recent recipient of 5-out-of-5 horns on MetalSucks!) in its entirety. The fact that they’re playing a full album is awesome in and of itself (who else does that nowadays??), but thankfully the execution lived up to the billing at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn last Sunday night. The band had a full HD screen with psychedelic video clips that roughly synched up to the storyline of the music; the band was tight as hell, the sound was crystalline, the audience beyond stoked. It was a fucking fantastic night, and if I hadn’t seen this show earlier that same week, it probably would’ve been my choice for #1 live show of ‘09 thus far.

Metal Injection (who were also in attendance… as fans, I might add) have posted a clip from CultureBully of the beginning of the show from the tour’s stop in Minneapolis. The clip captures everything perfectly, from what it looked and sounded like to what it felt like to be there, even though we saw the show in a completely different city on a completely different night. That’s just where Mastodon are in their game these days — completely on top of it, killing it every single night. Ten or twenty years from now you’ll be able to say “I saw them when…” the way people now speak fondly about seeing Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd in their prime. Mastodon are just that good.

Shout-out to our boys in Intronaut who sounded fantastic live in the opening slot.

-VN

Better late than never. Because albums this good deserve to go on the record. Seeing as I’ve procrastinated on writing this piece for two months, let’s make it quick and snappy.

If you like Mastodon purely for the mosh, you will probably not be too crazy about Crack the Skye. If you like Mastodon because of their proggy, weird, bizarro nature you will really, really like Crack the Skye. Count me in the category of the latter. It’s the album they’ve been alluding to for their entire career, a masterwork by a band at the absolute top of their game, pushing the boundaries of metal and unafraid to experiment with music in ways that may alienate their core fan base. It’s a trippy, adventurous work — though without a doubt still quite heavy and distinctly Mastodonian — that ends up a full album’s album, not just because of the conceptual nature of the lyrics but because of the flow of the music. No one writes records this involved anymore. The production (courtesy of Brendan O’Brien, who for the most part appears to have let Mastodon do their own thang uninhibited) is world class, and the performances are next level, especially in the lead guitar department. Though for the most part I believe that music reviews should focus only on the music itself, it’s worth noting that the packaging and presentation of Crack the Skye are absolutely stellar, and it’s worth considering these aspects as part of the music itself because they underscore just how finely Mastodon pay attention to every last detail of everything they do. Crack the Skye is phenomenal start to finish, and in this humble blogger’s opinion it is Mastodon’s best, most musically developed record yet.

So, for only the second time in MetalSucks history:

(five out of five horns)

-VN

We’re giving away so much awesome free shit at the MS Mansion right now that I can’t even keep track of all of it, so there’s a good chance you can’t either. To wit, here’s a list of all the current contests we’re running:

• Two pairs of tickets to see Mastodon play Crack the Skye in its entirety in New York City.
• A pair of 3 Inches of Blood Nike Encore High sneakers!
• One pair of tickets to each stop of the Relapse Contamination Tour, featuring Obscura, Graves of Valor and Abysmal Dawn.
• Brutal Truth and Agoraphobic Nosebleed CDs in our (almost)-weekly Photo Caption Contest.
• Two copies of the super-extra-special edition of Machine Head’s The Blackening CD for deciphering a completely unreadable band logo.

Don’t say we never did nothin’ for ya.

-VN

Most of you who (rightly so) loved Mastodon’s latest masterpiece Crack the Skye probably already know that the band is currently doing a very special tour of small venues with Kylesa and Intronaut, and that they’re playing Crack the Skye in its entirety on said tour (full list of tour dates available at Shockhound. Most of you are also bitching that you haven’t been able to get tickets to this very special event because of the limited amount of tickets available. Bitch no more: MetalSucks is giving away TWO pairs of tickets to see Mastodon perform in New York on either May 9th (Irving Plaza) or May 10th (Williamsburg Music Hall, Brooklyn), your choice which.

TO WIN, LEAVE A COMMENT WITH A SWINE-FLU INSPIRED PUN ON ANYTHING RELATED TO MASTODON. MAKE SURE YOU TYPE IN A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS, AS WINNERS WILL BE CONTACTED BY EMAIL BY MAY 6TH AND WILL BE GUESTLISTED ON THE SHOW OF THEIR CHOICE.

Examples:
“Brent Swineds”
“Colony of Pigmen”
“The Last Bacon”

Good luck!

I’m sure Saner’s mother has never been prouder.

Read the entire article here.

-AR

Baseball season officially got underway and New England Metal and Hardcore Fest is coming up next weekend. Surely all is peachy in the world then, yeah? Not so much.

• Dave Mustaine feuded with a mystery band, then kissed and made up before we even knew it.
• Protest the Hero released a new video and gave us a bunch of tickets for their tour to give away.
• We spoke with Daath’s Eyal Levi and TAD/Tadgarden’s Tad.
• Kip W. gave us two recaps (Day 1, Day 2) of our booze-fueled SXSW journey.
• Fear Factory got back together… except not.
• Ya’ll argued about which Mastodon album is the best and whether Jesse or Howard was/is the better KsE frontman.
• Ya’ll argued even more about IWRESTLEDABEARONCE and Oceano.
• We got an exclusive red carpet report from Metallica’s Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

See you next week. New England Metal and Hardcore Fest!!

Mastodon are without a doubt one of the most important metal bands to come out of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal movement, if not one of the most important metal bands of this decade. Last week’s career-best debut of their new record Crack the Skye proves just that. While there will be always be some who don’t get or just don’t like Mastodon, we’re willing to bet most of you do. So which is their best album to date? It’s a tough call. Vote below then tell us why; and, of course, if you hate the band altogether, don’t be shy.

n

The infamous Now That’s What They Call Music comp, now it’s thirtieth iteration (!), will never stop selling. Nor will Hannah Montana. Given, it’s tough for any true metal band to crack the Billboard 200, but Mastodon did just once again that by notching a #11 debut with Crack the Skye, beat out metal-wise only by Papa Roach (ugh). Elsewhere, we got some surprises from Chris Cornell, Twiztid (!?) and others. Sales figures for those and other notable hard rock and metal releases after the jump.

Click to read more…

While all of you are pleasuring yourself to the sounds of the new album from Mastodon (a.k.a this generation’s Yes), I’m being the contrarian and spending some quality time with fresh tunes from Fucked Up. Indeed, the Canadian post-hardcore artistes are making the most out of this month, with two vinyl releases now available. The first is the 7″ single for No Epiphany, a stellar track off of The Chemistry of Common Life, one of my favorite albums of 2008. The B-side is a remix by noise popsters No Age, a band whose appeal I still can’t grasp. The more exciting release is the Year Of The Rat 12″, the latest installment in Fucked Up’s series based on Chinese astrology, released on the What’s Your Rupture label. The main event is the eleven minute title track, a raucous slab of punk fury elongated in a surprisingly natural way. On the flip is the killer “First Born”, a song that easily could have come from the same sessions as last year’s aforementioned album. If you can tear yourself away from Crack This Guy for 20 minutes, I’d recommend giving Fucked Up a try.

-GS

[Gary Suarez is not paying his hard-earned money for a proggy concept album about a paralyzed boy whose soul ascends into space, encounters Russian Orthodox mystics and subsequently enters the body of Rasputin. He also writes for Brainwashed and usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]