Hast Seen the New Metal Album?

[7/4]

Interesting take on jazz and metal:

December 27, 2004

CRITIC'S CHOICE: NEW CD

Hast Seen the New Metal Album?

By BEN RATLIFF

Metal has more than a little in common with jazz, which may be one of the reasons I like it.

I won't connect the dots between improvisational styles in jazz and metal, though I know several metal-loving jazz musicians who could. But here are the facts: both kinds of music have a few big, durable, long-haul names - Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Wynton Marsalis, Keith Jarrett (I have never typed those proper nouns in a row before) - and, miles beneath them, hundreds of good-to-great bands that are the beneficial termites of American culture, gradually breaking down dead styles and returning them to the soil. To their small but deep audiences, they are loved, reviled, subdivided endlessly into styles and argued about passionately.

Both kinds of musicians, jazz and metal, are deeply concerned with technique, and deal with essential aesthetic issues of style and progress. There is a dominant sound (or several) in jazz, as there is in metal, and for the last 20 years adjustments to those dominant sounds have been made at a much slower rate. (Does this mean the genres are exhausted? No. It means that the musicians' perceptions of the music's needs have changed.)

To an outsider, great swaths of metal sound just about the same. Ditto jazz. Generally speaking, both kinds of music rest on an underground, highly coded premise in the if-you-have-to-ask-you'll-never-know category.

These circumstances make it possible for a great metal record to appear without the larger world of popular music ever knowing about it. "Leviathan" (Relapse), the second album by the Atlanta band Mastodon, has so far been that kind of record.

Let's get the concept out of the way quickly. "Leviathan" is a song cycle based on Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick." The band's drummer, Brann Dailor, was reading the novel last year and came across the early passage that calls the whale "the salt-sea Mastodon"; after that, the rest of the book seemed like a metaphor for a small crew of manic, undershowered rock musicians on tour. (The whale is the audience, if you like, or maybe the elusive quantity of hard-rock apotheosis.) The directly Melville-related lyrics on "Leviathan" appear early. The line "There's magic in the water that attracts all men" roars over a crooked riff in "I Am Ahab." Others apply by extension: "Island" invokes the old metal themes of Norse gods and volcanic eruptions, and the lyrics of "Hearts Alive" are generally about watery violence.

But what's fantastic about "Leviathan" is that it sums up the last three decades of hard rock - a great width of styles, bludgeoning and tricky, from Metallica to Iron Maiden to King Crimson to Black Flag to Black Sabbath - with incredible acuity, extracting a great deal of what has been most effective in them.

Yet the music doesn't seem like a dull exercise in classicism or position itself above the form altogether. Mastodon comes from an intellectual underground of the genre: Mr. Dailor and Bill Kelliher, one of the band's guitarists, were once in Today Is the Day, a kind of severe art-rock band. There can be a queasy air of superiority in the studied under-productions and over-cogitations of underground metal, whether it's the kind that deals with polymetric rhythms or the kind that deliberately repeats a droning riff more times than you thought possible.

You don't find that in "Leviathan." Mastodon has nearly mastered rock dynamics: they start out with durable riffs, build them up, then tunnel into tricky new strains of frenetic melody, diverting your attention from the payoff. When the reward finally comes, it is gold-plated, returning home to the viscous riff and the earthquake groove. (The music is written cooperatively by the four band members, who include Troy Sanders on bass and the guitarist Brent Hinds; the dense, shiny production is by Matt Bayles.)

Mr. Dailor occasionally plays much more complex fills than he needs to. These songs hold together through a thought-out symmetry, but they do have many parts. One of the guitarists plays a careening country lick during a break in "Megalodon," after a line about a watery grave, and before a fast Iron Maiden-like two-beat rhythm. There's so much flash and detail. Yet through the record they keep serving the bottom level, the no-nonsense headbanger frequencies of metal.

The record keeps those questions in the air that keep an album interesting: Who are these guys? What's their angle? Who allowed them to do this many things?

[John B]

This album is fantastic. One of the best discs I have heard in a long time.

[7/4]

This album is fantastic. One of the best discs I have heard in a long time.

It's an amazing review. Makes me want to run out and pick up the album. I don't listen to much metal these days, but I'm curious.

[John B]

This album is fantastic.  One of the best discs I have heard in a long time.

It's an amazing review. Makes me want to run out and pick up the album. I don't listen to much metal these days, but I'm curious.

The band is extremely tight, with the drummer, in particular, being very impressive. The music is intelligent, with moments of calm among the more aggressive parts. I don't really hear any connection to jazz, however.

If you go to the Relapse Records website and scroll down a bit there are mp3s of two tracks off of this album you can listen to. The second track, Blood and Thunder, is one of my fvorite tracks on the album. These will give you a good sense of what is in store should you buy the album.

Edited December 27, 2004 by John B

[7/4]

The band sounds great...never got that kind of "singing"....

[Craig23]

As an aside: While you are at the Relapse Records link John provided, listen to the Negrophagist song samples just under Mastodon. I'm not big on the vocals but they have the fastest most tight sounding rhythm guitar work I have ever heard.

[Joe G]

In my own musical path, I went from rock to jazz-influenced bluegrass/new acoustic, back to rock and especially metal, then back to jazz. There must be something in both forms that are akin.

Either that or I'm a split personality type.

Has anyone heard the album by Perfect Circle?

[BERIGAN]

As an aside: While you are at the Relapse Records link John provided, listen to the Negrophagist song samples just under Mastodon. I'm not big on the vocals but they have the fastest most tight sounding rhythm guitar work I have ever heard.

Yeah, that is pretty damn good!!!!