MASTODON - Lowlands Festival, Netherlands 2006

For the weekend, it's a hard-right turn away from Marley irieness into Mastodon gnarliness.

I just snagged the new zombie Rasputin-vs.-cosmic Satan epic Crack the Skye, released this week, and find it easier on the ears than their 2006 major-label debut Blood Mountain, which was almost too far-out for me (kinda like the Mars Volta's Amputechture, which happened to be released on the same day...apparently there was something gnarly as fuck in the water on September 12, 2006).

Not sure where I stand on the burgeoning notion that Mastodon is the greatest pure-metal band since Metallica. (I say "pure metal" to distinguish from jazz metal or heritage metal or death metal or glam metal or pop metal or stoner metal or funk metal or thrash metal or prog metal or ethno-metal...all of which I also dig. However, I won't dignify nu metal, rap metal or hair metal with links.)

I like and respect Mastodon for their brains and craft and chops, not to mention their wicked-nifty album covers, but so far -- as undeniably powerful as they are -- they're a tad sludgy and short on melodic hookage to be any real threat to Metallica's position in the pantheon.

Still, for pure math-rock heavitude, they may very well be the best band in the known Universe.

This killer-ass boot, a Dutch FM broadcast, features much of Blood Mountain -- then a month away from release -- backed up by three or four tunes from the band's undisputed metallic masterpiece, 2004's monumental, Melville-and-Moby-Dick-inspired Leviathan, culminating in the massive magnificence of "Blood and Thunder".

MASTODON
Lowlands Festival - Biddinghuizen, Netherlands - August 19, 2006 (FMB)
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