MASTODON Drummer: "Blood Mountain Showcases Band At Its Mightiest"
2006-04-06 13:22:03


MTV.com (http://www.mtv.com) has issued the following report from Chris Harris:

Before the weekend arrives, progressive sludge metallers MASTODON will finish recording Blood Mountain, the unbridled band's third studio LP.

According to drummer Bränn Dailor, the album showcases the Atlanta band at its mightiest.

"It's hard to be inside something and talk to people about it," he said. "And it's kind of a cliché that the people in the band think that what they're working on at the moment is the best stuff they've ever done. But I guess that's the way that we feel. It's just more intense, more — I mean I like everything we've ever done. But at the moment, I'm really digging on this stuff. It's hard for me to put into words what's different about it. It's just better."

By the end of the month, Seattle-based producer Matt Bayles (ISIS, HORSE THE BAND) will wash his hands of the finished product, which will be shipped to New York, where Rich Costey (AUDIOSLAVE, MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE) will mix it. In August the follow-up to 2004's epic Leviathan will be unleashed upon the world.

With Blood Mountain, which has taken more than two months to record, Dailor said he's hoping his band and others like it can accomplish something huge: to rattle complacent rock fans who might not grasp what Mastodon have been trying to do since forming in 1999.

"I hope we can start a prog revolution, because the timing's right," he said. "You've got a Tool record that's coming out, an Isis record that's coming out, a Mars Volta record that's coming out, a Mastodon record that's coming out, and I hope that converges into something really awesome for music where it doesn't become pop, but there's a little more sharing of the pie. It would be cool if you had kids in their bedrooms not trying to learn Linkin Park songs, but they're trying to learn Mastodon songs. It's cool music that's honest and from the heart, and it's technically challenging."

Mastodon started writing soon after last year's Ozzfest wrapped and recorded more than a dozen tracks for the effort, including 'Circle Of Cysquatch', 'Hunters Of The Sky', 'The Sleeping Giant', 'Bladecatcher', 'The Colony Of Birchmen', 'Pendulous Skin', 'The Siberian Divide', 'Capillarian Crest', 'Hand Of Stone', 'Crystal Skull', 'The Wolf Is Loose' and 'This Mortal Soil'. Based on Dailor's description, Blood Mountain's going to follow in Leviathan's heady footsteps.

While Leviathan focused on dystopian author Herman Melville's opus Moby Dick, the new album will revolve around an unnamed citizen's ascension to the apex of a snowcapped mountain.

"It's about climbing up a mountain and the different things that can happen to you when you're stranded on a mountain, in the woods, and you're lost," the drummer said. "You're starving, and hallucinating, running into strange creatures. You're being hunted. It's about that whole struggle."

While Dailor was loath to reveal the album's entire plot, he did explain that at one point in the story, presented in the track 'The Siberian Divide', the anonymous hero finds himself "caught in a blizzard where [he] becomes frostbitten and frozen and [he's] starving and starts to hallucinate." Just then, "this snow queen appears before him and tells him it's OK to start eating his own flesh. And then he starts to do that. Then an aurora borealis appears, and he thinks it's God, and it starts affecting this crystal skull he's been toting up the mountain, and it starts to warm his body. That, coupled with the knowledge of the aurora borealis being God, gives him the strength to start to carry on again."

Apparently, the album follows this character as he combs Blood Mountain in search of the crystal skull, which he needs to place atop the treacherous crag — for what purpose, Dailor's not saying. Along the way, this man encounters a whole host of nefarious creatures, including a vicious wolf and a Cysquatch: "a one-eyed Sasquatch that can see into the future," he said.

Mastodon called on a number of their rock and roll buddies to contribute to Mountain, including Scott Kelly of Neurosis, Mars Volta keyboardist Ikey Owens, and Volta frontman Cedric Bixler Zavala, who sings on 'The Siberian Divide'.

And this summer, Dailor said the band will showcase some of the new material when it takes the stage during the upcoming Unholy Alliance Tour. That trek's set to kick off June 6th in San Diego, with dates running through July 22 in Long Beach, California. LAMB OF GOD, CHILDREN OF BODOM and THINE EYES BLEED are also on the bill, which is anchored by headliners SLAYER.

Mastodon will spend the rest of their time escorting fans up Blood Mountain. "We'll be out on the road forever, and everyone will get a chance to see us a million times until they're sick of us," Dailor said. "And then we'll go away and write a new record."

I hope it is awesome.

Cedric Bixler Zava and Ikey Owens playing with Mastodon..... this could be fucking brilliant.

Good to see Mastodon working with matt Bayles again.

It has the potential to be very cool.

i just got a hard on !!

Cool album title.

j.

Somewhat interestingly i did a google search on blood mountain and the first thing that pops up are cabins in the woods in North Georgia off the Applachian Trail.

Could be a coincidence they are from atlanta and the mountains are in North Georgia, or maybe they have been up there and thought it would be a cool name and started coming up with some cool storylines.

Either way the cabins look pretty cool and i may take a trip up there this summer.

this is so good

alright, if Ikey and Ced are playing with them this must be pretty decent.

god I hope they don't fuck it up

I have mixed emotions.

They've been on a hotstreak. 2 amazing albums and a pretty decent EP.

They are bringing in guests that I really don't like. Neil Fallon ruled. Anyone from Neurosis is great but TMV I don't dig. Proggy direction? I was hoping this new one was going to sound alot more like classic Metallica with a good drummer.
Also, their recent cover of Orion is average at best.

Sleeping Giant is such an awesome song.

i don't even really listen to this anymore . it lacked a lot of the sheer awesomeness of Remission and Leviathan. it wasn't bad, it just didn't live up to my expectations.

The guy from TMV didn't even do much...so I don't see how that guest can anger you...I guess if you're just angry at the name association.

Well I get the feeling anti hadn't heard the album when he made the post (although his prediction unfortunately came true). And the type of artists you collaborate with definitely does affect how the album can be expected to sound.

You know, I don't get this band. Everyone says they're this huge, mighty force, but no matter how many chances I give them, they sound flat and not heavy to me. It doesn't even feel like metal, it feels like rock trying to be metal (that's never good). There are so many other bands that do this sound so much better.

it's all about the riff. they worship the riff.

I haven't been listening to them much lately, but I do still love some Mastodon.

And yes MF, they do. As do I.

So do I, man, but the riffs don't seem that memorable to me. And they don't play them heavily enough.