Sevengill
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Last Active 02-01-22 4:18 pm
Joined 08-14-14

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 Lists
02.20.24 Favorite Metal One-and-Dones02.19.24 7 Gills, 25 Black Metals (re: HAWKZ)
05.03.22 Slugdge x Ulcerate x Deep Purple???02.27.20 Made an impressionist piano album
09.06.19 Favorite Album at Every 0.1 Rating08.23.19 Best Zombie movies
01.02.19 Seven's favorites of 201810.28.18 Buying a guitar -- advice/recs?
08.13.18 My band's first live show06.21.18 Just released a new album
03.19.18 Cataract Bandersnatch03.14.18 Twin Turbos reimagined
03.12.18 Firepower Ranked02.15.18 First Cassette on My Label
02.08.18 Top 10 Metal Albums of My Lifetime01.16.18 Revocation Not Ranked
12.30.17 2017 Addendum12.08.17 Seven's Top 50 of 2017
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Mastodon Ranking Explained

Because I can't let the wave pass without getting my say in.
1Mastodon
Crack the Skye

It's absolutely batshit crazy, and that's what makes it perfect. The layers of sound in songs like "Ghost of Karelia" is, frankly, astounding. You can listen a hundred times and still hear something you'd never noticed before, opening up a new portal through which to view this behemoth. Swirling organ, distant synthesizer chirps, roaring guitars, and Brann's most psychedelic performance ever make this a labyrinthine journey that stands up to repeated listens like no album before or since. Music on another level.
2Mastodon
Leviathan

An album that brings to life its source material like few others, Leviathan set a new standard for 21st Century metal by fusing propulsive guitar riffs with inventive song structures, all the while holding back the climax until /after/ what seemed the perfect moment to create an even better one. Songs like "Seabeast" and "Megalodon" boil and churn in cut time signatures, while the epic "Hearts Alive" wraps things up through-composed grandeur.
3Mastodon
Remission

Remission absolutely lives up its song titles: a behemoth stomping about and crushing everything in its path; a man on fire cursing his existence, or a legendary monster rising from the deep. It's brilliant, messy, and full of unbridled fury. "March of the Fire Ants" shows no fear as it throws in a major-key rebuttal to its own surging core, while "Mother Puncher" lurches between caustic, slashing guitar lines and half-time songwriting over Brann's tireless double-bass. It's a furious opening statement that would be refined for three albums before Mastodon finally exorcised its ghost and shifted to something new.
4Mastodon
Blood Mountain

Blood Mountain is more tightly executed and better-written than Remission, but the windfall had already been made. Still, the heavy metal playbook went right out the window during the album's first half, during which Mastodon blasts through several tracks that sound amazingly cohesive despite sounding entirely unlike one another. "Sleeping Giant" simmers over rolling guitar arpeggios, in stark contrast to "Crystal Skull," which makes its explosive point with tribal tom-toms and Troy Sanders bellowing lines that insist you ball up your fists and roar along. Things cool down during the second half, as cleaner passages and creepy counterpoint guitar give "This Mortal Soil" and "Siberian Divide" an otherworldly atmosphere. Blood Mountain was, and still is, a tremendous follow-up to Leviathan, and is a worthy cornerstone of any modern metal collection.
5Mastodon
Emperor of Sand

All in all, Emperor of Sand stands as a welcome return to form for the band. Writing within a conceptual framework for the first time in eight years, Mastodon busts out several intricate and fiery chapters of a macabre story while touching upon elements of its previous three albums. The gurgling organ that graced "The Czar" returns during "Roots Remain" and "Jaguar God," while "Andromeda" explores modal composition in a throwback to "Circle of Cycsquatch." Elsewhere, "Show Yourself" and "Ancient Kingdom" continue Mastodon' recent efforts to write something that sticks with you immediately (replay value notwithstanding). It's an album that by design is better as a whole than the sum of its parts, something that hasn't been true since Crack the Skye.
6Mastodon
Call of the Mastodon

Mastodon hadn't quite figured out where they were going here, but among the hastily-assembled songs there are plenty of awesome moments. "Hail to Fire" and "Deep Sea Creature" feature the most searing and cerebral, respectively, pieces of songwriting Mastodon had assembled to this point, though "Welcoming War" and "We Built This Come Death" decidedly lack focus in the writing department as the quintet had yet to really gel. "Battle At Sea" is the most fully-realized song here, and its crescendo from crawling clean guitar to Brann's monstrous drum climax remains of the seminal moments in the band's canon.
7Mastodon
Once More 'Round the Sun

Mastodon did the "radio-friendly" thing better here than on The Hunter, as the wild swings between bruising anthems and laid-back explorations were smoothed out. "The Motherload" and "Asleep In the Deep" show a knack for weaving furious instrumentation with Brann's improving vocals, leading to a handful of truly memorable moments in an album that, unfortunately, often settled for less.
8Mastodon
The Hunter

This happened but I really don't feel like talking much about it. "Curl of the Burl" sounded like a joke song at the time, but at least it was sort of amusing -- unlike the bipolar songwriting in which the band sounded comfortable while meandering along during the title track, and rather uncomfortable trying to be catchy during "Octopus Has No Friends" and "Stargasm." Also, the song titles are universally atrocious.
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