The Perils of Astral Projection in Late Imperial Russia

All right, here's some heavy metal musings at long last. Today's topic: Mastodon's latest record, Crack the Skye, which is a concept album of sorts. I'm not going to go too deeply into the details of the concept part, as such information is readily available online. Better yet, you could listen to the record and read the liner notes. The latter course of action is unquestionably the superior one, because as cool as it is to read that Crack the Skye deals with the accidental adventures of a paraplegic astral traveler who ends up in Rasputin's body just before Rasputin is offed by Yusupov and company, among other things, it's far more rewarding to absorb the songs and their lyrics as the band intended. Mastodon's graphic design is, as always, top notch, so the liner notes are an aesthetic treat unto themselves.

Blood Mountain, Mastodon's last record, didn't really do it for me, or at least I don't remember it doing much for me. It had its moments, but I seem to recall a lot of stuff that didn't strike my eardrums the right way. When I heard about Crack the Skye I decided to listen to Blood Mountain again to see what I thought of it a couple years later. To my dismay, I found the CD case but not the CD, so I said "fuck it" and went ahead and bought Crack the Skye. If my fears that the new album would be too much like the last came true, it wouldn't be the first time I was burned by giving a band another shot. (Note that Leviathan, the album prior to Blood Mountain, was fantastic, and after digging the hell out of it, I went back to my copy of Remission, which I hadn't cared for, and found that it was more to my liking the second time around.)

Crack the Skye marks the second time I've been pleasantly surprised- nay, fucking floored- by this band, and establishes, in my mind at least, a Star Trek-like one-good-one-bad pattern. The musicianship is incredible; it's expansive and intriguing without lapsing into wankery. It's got a great texture to it, which the production does an excellent job of emphasizing. It's heavy without being conventionally so, and no, that's not code for "downtuned," "lots of blast beats," or "merely heavier than what you'd hear on the radio." (It is the latter, but really, what isn't unless you're listening to KTRU?) Importantly, the heaviness is tempered by- or provides gravitational force to- a kind of ethereality that pervades the record, which is in keeping with its lyrical concept. Everything flows, too. While each song is very good on its own merits, they all work together exceptionally well to give form to that increasingly rare specimen, the album. Kudos for Mastodon for structuring things so well and promoting repeated, extended listening sessions; then again, if they hadn't done so, the record wouldn't work too well as a concept album.

One of the things that turned me off of Blood Mountain was the vocal work. It sounded like Mastodon, but not really. Crack the Skye continues in the same vocal direction, but this time the band has figured out what I imagine they were aiming for on their last release. There's a lot less harsh throatwork here than there was in the past, but it couldn't be otherwise; this is Mastodon's tribute to prog rock, and while there's certainly room for death metal vocals in such an approach (viz. Opeth), the material here requires the mostly clean melodicism found in the vocals. Some vocal effects are used, but they don't come out of nowhere or fail to make sense, keeping with the overall flow mentioned above.

When I first conceived of this little essay, I intended to spend half of it venting my spleen about the absurdity of autocracy, particularly in the form of czarism and even more specifically as personified by Nicholas II. I was also going to wax venomous about the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia's decision in 1981 to canonize the Romanovs as martyrs. I shit you not. These are the kind of mental tangents listening to Crack the Skye inspired. I doubt anyone else would end up thinking along those lines, but I'd say it's a testament to the album's power that it not only creates a fascinating universe of its own, but that said universe seeps out into the minds of those who encounter it by listening to the record. Even if one sets the lyrical content aside, there are all kinds of riffs and melodies here that will fasten themselves to your skull like tentacles. Just as further expeditions into the depths of Leviathan yielded new insights, spinning Crack the Skye several times will provide not only hours of entertainment, but a greater understanding of, among other things, the nature of heaviness and progressiveness- not to mention the precautions that should be taken when leaving one's body for the astral plane.

-DAS, 4.16.09