Mastodon has never been a stranger to wacky concept albums (like 2004's Moby Dick song suite Leviathan) but this is just an insane concept. So there's this kid in Czarist Russia who's terminally ill and leaves his body to travel to an astral plane via a crack in the sky. Then some crazy shit about Rasputin coming back from the dead and the kid and Rasputin switching places or something. Fucking crazy. Anyways, Crack The Skye rocks pretty hard- you really don't need to understand the subtext of the concept. Once again, Mastodon's musicianship is par excellence. The way they change tempos and time signatures is just nutty. You really don't know what's coming next in every song and once you know the songs well, it's still awesome to marvel at their genius in putting it all together. The best songs on here are "Divinations," "Quintessence" and "The Last Baron" all who share the same qualities of having epic choruses, ripping solos and crazy shifts in tempo. The surf-y guitar solo at the 2:13 mark on "Divinations" is the best moment of the whole album but the whole thing flows together very cohesively.
One thing about Mastodon is that they don't fit into any category or sub-genre of metal (like grindcore, doom, black metal etc) and thats much to their credit, they just make the music that comes to them and their fans accept that gladly. You can tell they're really pushing themselves musically on this album, pushing their voices especially. The choruses are epic as I said, but the main difference is more singing and less screaming than 2007's Blood Mountain or Leviathan. These guys nail it pretty well though, I'm very impressed.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment