Masterfully combining the full power of metal with progressive rock cerebral structures, this band from Atlanta give their fourth album "Crack The Skye" which like its predecessor, the furious "Blood Mountain", is a conceptual album about a bizarre story that include Rasputin, the Tsarist Russia, astral travels, spirits and demons. Perhaps slowed and less aggressive than "Blood Mountain", but also so much darker and ambitious, "Crack The Skye" confirms that the quartet's music goes far beyond the power chords and headbanging delivering 9 songs (including instrumental versions of a couple of pieces) with an elaborated and full of nuances sound without losing its hard, heavy and often clangorous essence. Much closer to Tool than to Dream Theater, Mastodon go in prog metal using, without abuse, progressive elements (passages, structures, etc.) to achieve a more sophisticated sound while maintaining an always rude and visceral attitude. With the guitarists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher playing wild chords but also solos that winks to David Gilmour, the album passes so overwhelming between pieces as "Quintessence," with a progressive start and final explosively heavy, "Ghost Of Karelia" , with a phantasmal riff that immediately takes us back to "Schism" from Tool, and "The Last Baron" a monumental, and perhaps the best summary of Mastodon's music, such that at the end leave us exhausted and not by their 13:00 minutes of duration, but by the intensity that reaches: after 3 minutes of simple and almost inconsequential metal "The Last Baron" takes off and starts to level up until it reach a quite progressive passage, with no signs of metal, then turn into a 100% Toolean music full of power that leads to the headbanging, finishing with another Gilmourean solo. Without rest nor truce along 50 minutes, Mastodon delivery in "Crack The Skye" elaborated and ambitious music, but above all, no-mercy intense metal. -CORANNIEIT-
Mastodon, Crack The Skye
Reprise, 2009
Links:
Official Website
My Space Site
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