Mastodon - Crack the Skye 5/5

01. Oblivion 5:46 02. Divinations 3:38 03. Quintessence 5:27 04. The Czar: Usurper/Escape/Martyr/Spiral 10:54 05. Ghost Of Karelia 5:24 06. Crack The Skye 5:54 07. The Last Baron 13:00

Mastodon have always been a band I’ve held in the very highest esteem; extremely technically proficient, an excellent live act, and above all the rare beast of a prog metal band who manage to avoid Lord of the Rings entirely in their subject material. So, great things were expected of their fourth full-length, Crack the Skye, when it was released earlier this year. And my god, did Mastodon deliver.

At first listen, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Georgia 4-piece have mellowed a bit over the years. The vocals are relatively clean throughout, and they’ve shed some of the wilder, more experimental musical content - there’s nothing quite as unhinged as Bladecatcher here. It’s still much more complex and intricate than your average metal album, still unmistakably Mastodon, but you get the feeling that while Leviathan and Blood Mountain foamed at the mouth, Crack the Skye merely looks at you a bit funny. That’s until you start to explore the story a little.

And oh yes, Mastodon have a story to tell. That’s the point of the cleaned-up vocals, the more unified musical approach; this is Mastodon with a greater sense of narrative purpose than ever before. They’ve always dealt in concept albums, in one way or another - Leviathan was based on the tale of Moby Dick, and Blood Mountain chronicled a crazed hallucination of a journey up a mystical mountain in search of a Crystal Skull; no relation, I would assume, to the one in Indiana Jones 4. Somehow, though, even from that background, Crack the Skye manages to represent a leap forward in ambition and downright mind-fuckery.

The concept, if I’ve managed to even begin to comprehend it properly, centres around a paraplegic, who learns to astral-travel in out-of-body experiences. He gets marooned in space, drifts into a wormhole, and ends up in the Spirit World. The Spirits decide to help him by putting him in the body of Russia’s very own turn-of-the-century “mad monk”, Rasputin; and that’s just in the first three songs. In the course of 10-minute epic and album centrepiece, The Czar, Rasputin goes to overthrow the Czar, is killed, travels out of his body alongside our paraplegic friend, and vows to return him to his own body. However, in drummer Brann Dailor’s own words, “they end up running into the Devil along the way and the Devil tries to steal their souls and bring them down”. I didn’t feel I could put that any better, really. So, that’s the concept that Mastodon attempt to convey in 50 minutes of music. I believe the word everyone has been using to describe it is “ambitious”; I’d call that an understatement. But somehow, on record, the band turn that frankly crazed collection of myths and theories into an epic journey.

Now, I know, going on that concept alone, you’d be excused for thinking that Crack the Skye should be a bit of a chore to listen to, a bit of slog. And that’s why it’s so impressive that Mastodon never feel the need to over-complicate the telling of this epic story; in comparison with other progressive bands, like, say, The Mars Volta, who require you to have an inhuman vocabulary and a dictionary to hand just to keep up with the lyrics. It seems strange to begin with that even while telling this complicated tale, Mastodon give over whole swathes of the record to instrumental jams and breakdowns; strange, until you realise that they’re creating these soundscapes to tell the story. Now that’s progressive music! The duelling, inter-twining leads of Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher, alongside the frankly jazzy drumming of Dailor, play just as big a part in telling the story as Troy Sanders’ vocals. And while I mentioned earlier that musically it may be less diverse in its extremes than previous efforts, on Crack the Skye Mastodon quite literally do do more with less. This approach, of building the story through the music as well as through the lyrics, does wonders simplifying what should, by all rights, be an incredibly difficult album to listen to. And it’s really not; tracks which purport to last upwards of 10 minutes absolutely breeze by, and I frequently listen to the album repeatedly in single sittings. That’s really how it was designed to be listened to, as well, as a whole; that’s why I’ve refrained from picking out individual tracks to critique. Across the board it’s fantastically executed; from the heavier, head-banging moments, to the really quite beautiful melodic segments, this is just a straight-up belter of an album.

Like all great works of art, however, there isn’t really an extent to which words can do Crack the Skye justice. Suffice to say that it’s bloody incredible, a ten out of fucking ten, and that if you haven’t already bought it and locked it in the CD player until you wore a hole in the disc, then you should. You really won’t regret it.

Crack The Skye is available to buy or download at play.com

Genre : Progressive

Article by Phil Sim