This is the tenth in an on-going series of posts covering my favourite rock and metal concept albums. In December, I reviewed Steve Hackett’s 1975 classic Voyage of the Acolyte, and I now turn to Atlanta-based quartet Mastodon, who have released a number of concept albums over the years. The band came to my attention when their song, Colony of Birchmen, was nominated for Best Metal Performance in the 2007 GRAMMY Awards. Since then, they have gone from strength to strength, garnering ever-increasing critical acclaim (6 GRAMMY nominations, including 1 win) and commercial success.
Band: Mastodon
Themes/concepts: Mastodon’s first four studio albums were each linked to the four elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Aether (celebrated in classical literature as the fifth element, or the quintessence, which fills up the spaces in the universe). Each album’s cover features a symbol above the band’s name, representing the element. After skipping the concept approach for their next two releases, Mastodon returned to the format with Emperor of Sand in 2017, with a theme built around the experience of fighting cancer.
Album: Remission (2002)
Best songs: Ol’e Nessie, Mother Puncher, Elephant Man
Narrative genre: No common story element across songs
Remission is considered the loosest of Mastodon’s concept albums, with the only unifying element (pardon the pun) being the theme of Fire. I listened to this album only after having experienced the progressively increasing sophistication of their subsequent efforts, so it feels a bit raw to my ears. This is Mastodon’s signature musical template – Bill Kelliher’s rhythm guitar riffs, Brann Dailor’s drum fills, Brent Hinds’ and Troy Sanders’ growled vocal deliveries, all of which combine to create a wall-to-wall carpet of sludge metal. Tracks like Ol’e Nessie, Trainwreck and Mother Puncher have intricate instrumental intros that go on for 1-2 minutes, before the vocals kick in. The instrumental Elephant Man is my favourite track of the album, and reminiscent of Metallica’s Orion in terms of pacing and cadence.
Album: Leviathan (2004)
Best songs: Blood and Thunder, Iron Tusk, Hearts Alive
Narrative genre: Literary fiction (Moby Dick)
Mastodon’s second album showed that they were not a flash in the pan. Leviathan is loosely based on the novel, Moby Dick (link to the element Water), and features more variation in the singing and guitar work, compared to Remission. The first track, Blood and Thunder, opens with some killer riffs and ends up being a genuine 80’s style thrash metal head-banger, as it settles into the chorus of “white whale, holy grail”. Iron Tusk is a fast-charging song that lights up in the middle with a catchy guitar hook, that sadly appears only once. The album caps off with a 13-minute epic, Hearts Alive, which describes the sinking of the ship by the whale…Brann Dailor’s drumming is spare, creating space for vocals dripping with the anguish of drowned men and guitar riffs building up to a crescendo of doom.
Album: Blood Mountain (2006)
Best songs: Sleeping Giant, Colony of Birchmen, This Mortal Soil, Siberian Divide, Pendulous Skin
Narrative genre: Speculative fiction
With their third album, Mastodon’s music moved away from pure sludge/thrash metal to a more sophisticated sound, incorporating cleaner vocals, slower drumming and more intricate guitar work, reminiscent of Metallica’s musical evolution from the Ride the Lightning to Master of Puppets. The album tells the story of a protagonist, who has to find a crystal skull and take it to the top of Blood Mountain (link to the element Earth); along the way, he awakens the mountain (Sleeping Giant), walks past a river of blood (Capillarian Crest), encounters various creatures, including a one-eyed Sasquatch (Circle of Cysquatch), a race of tree-men (Colony of Birchmen) and flying demons (Hunters of the Sky). The entire adventure is an allegory for the human condition and its associated struggles. The album yielded the group’s first Grammy nomination, for Colony of Birchmen (the title is an homage to the 1974 Genesis song The Colony of Slippermen). The guitar solo on the final track, Pendulous Skin, could have come off an early 70’s rock album, and This Mortal Soil is fast becoming one of my all-time Mastodon favourites.
Album: Crack the Skye (2009)
Best songs: Divinations, The Last Baron
Narrative genre: Science fiction
This album’s name is a tribute to Skye Dailor, Brann Dailor’s younger sister, who committed suicide when they were both teenagers. While this is a noble and sobering aspect of the album, the story itself is pretty abstract, and if there is a connection to real life, it remains in the minds of the musicians. In fact, you have to wonder what they were smoking when they put it together, here’s the synopsis – a crippled man travels into space (link to the element Aether), gets too close to the sun and ends up being sucked into a wormhole, landing up in the spirit realm; the spirits put him into Rasputin’s body, who is murdered as he tries to usurp the Tsar’s throne; this results in both Rasputin’s and the space traveler’s souls flying through a crack in the sky, after which Rasputin tries to help the man’s soul find its way back into his body. In spite of the fantastical premise which is right up my street, I haven’t warmed up to the album in the way many critics have. There are just two songs that appealed to me, Divinations and the extraordinary 13-minute-long dreamlike The Last Baron.
Album: Emperor of Sand (2017)
Best songs: Steambreather, Ancient Kingdom, Clandestiny, Jaguar God
Narrative genre: Tragedy
Mastodon returned to the concept album format in 2017, using the allegory of a wanderer who is cursed by a Sultan (aka Death) to a lifetime journey through the desert, to describe the never-ending battle with cancer. The album was a form of catharsis for multiple band members whose friends and family members had been fighting the disease. Most of the songs represent the thoughts and feelings of the Wanderer, as he deals with the pain, exhaustion and hopelessness of his plight. Emperor of Sand received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Rock Album (yes, the band’s sound now varied to the point they were not considered an always-on metal band), and the opening track Sultan’s Curse won the GRAMMY for Best Metal Performance (although it’s not one of my preferred tracks). The album closes with the poignant 8-minute-long Jaguar God, with the opening section bringing to mind some of Metallica’s ballads.
Mastodon’s latest release is the double album (not a concept album) Hushed and Grim, which is perhaps the best work in their twenty-year career. They are truly a brand that has improved with every release, staying true to their core sound, but constantly developing their song writing, instrumentation and vocal delivery.
Chronophlogiston 
3 thoughts on “Favourite rock/metal concept albums (Part 10) – 5 albums by Mastodon”