MASTODON LYRICS CLANDESTINY CRACK

More compellingly, Emperor of Sand marks the third Mastodon album directly inspired by a bandmember’s loss of a relative, in this case the untimely passing of guitarist Bill Kelliher’s mother.

The plot gets way, um, thicker than that, but suffice it to say the band leaves plenty of room to geek-out on the lyrics. In true Mastodon fashion, the album’s protagonist attempts to communicate telepathically with African and Native American tribes in hopes that they’ll make it rain on his behalf.

MASTODON LYRICS CLANDESTINY CRACK

But this time, the band took a page from Crack the Skye to spin an elaborate yarn about the passage of time, using sand as a metaphor for mortality but also as a window to set the story in the deserts of ancient Arabia. Like The Hunter and Once More ’Round the Sun, each of the songs on Emperor of Sand stands alone, musically speaking. That’s not difficult to do now that Mastodon have finally mastered the art of writing 11 tracks that flow together as one. Nevertheless, if you’re partial to Mastodon’s longer, classical-influenced songs, you’re not going to see Emperor of Sand’s appeal-unless you zoom-out and take the album as one complete work. But the hooks had been lurking all along. The transition to concise songs on 2011’s The Hunter might have come as a shock if you were a fan of the 13-minute rollercoaster suites that incorporated death, thrash, Southern, and traditional heavy metal. The band’s three lead vocalists-Hinds, bassist Troy Sanders, and drummer Brann Dailor-began to exchange death metal howls for increasingly melodic singing. By 2009’s Crack the Skye, a concept album that revisits Tsarist Russia via Stephen Hawking, Mastodon’s lyrics had grown as lofty as the music. At the same time, Crack the Skye contained hints that a more tempered approach was coming. Over their first three proper full-lengths-2002’s Remission, 2004’s Leviathan, and 2006’s Blood Mountain-Mastodon flexed their chops almost like a sports team that had more to prove the more successful it got. But unlike the last album, Emperor of Sand’s balance tips back to what Mastodon built a reputation on. And if you’re wary of returning Crack the Skye producer Brendan O’Brien-famous for helming ’90s blockbusters by Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots-you should know that, as usual, O’Brien smooths out some of the band’s angular edges. Second track “Show Yourself” starts out with a bouncy, almost danceable boogie-rock hook before reverting to one of Mastodon’s zig-zagging riffs. Be warned: If you see clean singing as a concession, you’re going to have issues with this album. Opener “Sultan’s Curse,” for one, is a trademark Mastodon gallop that again shows guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds doing his best impression of Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell. That’s not to say this new album isn’t stuffed to the gills with melodic singing-you can expect to hear a bunch of these songs on commercial radio this summer.

Mastodon lyrics clandestiny