Thursday 07/05/09 Mastodon, Kylesa @ House Of Blues, Boston MA

Southern-bred Mastodon is aptly named, a massively lumbering beast which tramples all in its path, using its terrible tusks to churn the earth or disembowel foes.  And then there's the hair, the dense pelt covering the body.  Though they've often dabbled in with pseudo-mystic story lines that often straddle the line between legendary feats (the kind that great flagons of mead are drunk to) and sub-Dungeons and Dragons fantasy, the newly released _Crack The Skye_ has upped the ante considerably.  One wonders if this records was inspired by an extended tour of Canada, or at least a plundering of the used LP bins of its record stores, since the fantastical content (wormholes, paraplegics, and Rasputin) could be a 10th generation mutation of a Rush/Voivod bastard child who has been brought up on weetabix, brown acid and whisky.  

Fans of the new material would do well to catch this tour, as the heavily-inked quartet (well, a quintet as an enlisted keyboardist is present for the tour) played the entire record front to back, in order, against an electronic backdrop of mystics, menacing soldiers in iron helmets, and a disoriented girl waking from some Lovecraftianly unsettled sleep.  The problem with this particular night lay in the mix; it was so bass-heavy that it completely swamped Brett Hinds and Bill Kelliher's guitar lines, and Brann Dailor's impossibly fast snare to tom drum fills were cast adrift.  "Crack The Skye" missed Neurosis singer Scott Kelly's gruff delivery, but the epic "The Czar" featured flying fingers on a flying V (courtesy of Brett, who also had his head whipping back and forth) amidst a sea of flying goat horns, courtesy of the upheld hands of the masses in the audience.

Once the proper record was over, the band stretched into songs from their back catalog, and those not intimately in touch with the back catalog could at least get a hint as to what record any particular song was from, which backdrop images including a horse with fire erupting from its back (_Remission_), a massive, tentacle-draped white whale (_Leviathan_) or an evil, three-headed elk (_Blood Mountain_).  I'd have preferred to hear man vs beast "I Am Ahab" but the riff gods were much appeased by "Iron Tusk," kicked off by another of Brann's super-tight rolls.  "Capillarian Crest" echoed the mad fretwork of Adrian Belew-era King Crimson, and the evening drew to a close with the awesomely mechanistic "March Of The Fire Ants," probably the most Neurosis-sounding song they've done.  Prog metal is alive, people.  Go seek it, or it will find you on its own terms.

Openers Kylesa are also Georgia-based, and they continue to impress.  Laura Pleasants is about as close to a metal goddess out there, her blonde mane flying as fast as her fiingers on her golden Les Paul.  Two drummers ensure that the beat is there, and the martial attention of the pounding is as good a call to battle as I've heard lately.  The molten riff-laden treat of "Unknown Awareness" is the peak of what they've done so far, the kind of song that if you hear it while driving, immediately you find yourself dangerously over the speed limit.  They could use a bit more of that potent stuff, and a bit less of the sludgy formless material.  Still, I'll keep listening.

The show in photos:

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