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User
Reviews 1
Approval 100%
Soundoffs 204
Album Ratings 6772
Objectivity 73%
Last Active 05-23-19 1:26 am
Joined 11-16-14
Review Comments 1,605
| Mastodon Ranking (2021)
Was next on my list. If I had it totally my way I think I would place The Hunter above Hushed, but I think there's still plenty here for me to get flamed about, lol. I wanted to include the live albums but I just haven't listened to Live at Brixton entirely, so.. maybe I'll add them at a later date. | | 1 |  | Mastodon
Blood Mountain
Would be epic if there was the Special Edition cover on here. This is their instrumental and compositional peak. Every song is a new land, and is an album as expansive and diverse as can be while housing so many forms of metal's territorial genre, from traditional heavy metal, punk, sludge, radio rock, prog, etc, with solos and intensity abound. Pendulous Skin is a beautiful sendoff and may be a top ten Masto track in itself. Also, Bladecatcher rules. | | 2 |  | Mastodon
Leviathan
2 and 3 was the hardest decision here. They're close enough to perhaps switch on any day, but when pressed, this more often than not is my go-to second. This is the album that defined basically most of their technique when it comes to structuring those sweet 3 minute Masto songs that still felt different from anything around. Band was on fire at this point. Absolute favorites on this would be: Blood and Thunder, Seabeast (still good), Island, Iron Tusk, Aqua Dementia and Hearts Alive. | | 3 |  | Mastodon
Crack the Skye
It's crazy an album with this reputation and recognition is 3rd, especially when some of their best moments are on this, and there are a few of those. Oblivion is a knockout, Divinations is (still) a classic rager, Ghost has that smooth hard groove etc. The hardest knock to this that I give it is the issue I sort of had from Day One which it is just too comfortably repetitive. It's a noticeable difference going from the bread and butter of their early material to hearing songs begin to predictably cycle back to repeating parts that feels just a little underdone. Most of the songs on Crack feel chopped in half in my opinion because of this, and kind of always had. It was necessary for them in terms of a final product, but it is evident that they were stuck at a crossroads of continuing with Blood Mountain-esque songwriting and honing a new direction. The early version of Divinations that was played live shows the type of song structure they were going for but got castrated in studio. | | 4 |  | Mastodon
9 Song Demo
I legit have this at a 5, but Eric Saner's vocals up the intensity and add a dimension to the same old tunes that you just have to hear. There are some extra riffs in some of the songs than their Call version and I just prefer the little more rawness of this than the more polished Call. | | 5 |  | Mastodon
Call of the Mastodon
Keeping to my preference of actually liking this more than Remission. It's a bummer because I really think I overlistened to it in my day. Hail to Fire will always get me up and going though. The best tracks on this is everything off the Lifesblood EP imo. | | 6 |  | Mastodon
Remission
A great debut, but I really don't die by the fire with it. I still like/dislike the same tracks after 15 years, so just hasn't had much improvement for me, in that dept. I think March of the Fire Ants was the very first song I heard by Mastodon and by golly did it leave an impression. I think my main beef with this is that I'm just not a fan of any of the verse material and the best parts of the songs are the stuff outside of that so it makes the overall experience choppy. Trainwreck is a sludgey post-metal masterpiece, but overall I'm really not big on the guitar tone, which might as well be a blasphemous opinion at this point. | | 7 |  | Mastodon
Emperor of Sand
This is where it gets weird, because after CTS/ it's like just about half of the albums I feel are only really good, even though they're pretty different from one another. If you chopped off the first four from this I wouldn't mind one bit, but the run from Roots to Scorpion Breath is their strongest post CTS material. | | 8 |  | Mastodon
Hushed and Grim
I'm really not feeling it guys, and I thought about having The Hunter here in its place. | | 9 |  | Mastodon
Live at the Aragon
It's Crack the Skye man, plus their choicest of cuts as the encore, (well except for Blood and Thunder lol). If you know Mastodon, you probably know this tour/setlist. | | 10 |  | Mastodon
The Hunter
I was going to have Cold Dark Place be right after Hushed and Grim, but I think it does a slight disservice to Hunter. It's about as adolescent as it'll come with Mastodon, but The Hunter is definitely a staple in terms of the modern Mastodon approach, and it was essentially done on a whim and without much prerequisite. Even if you don't like most of the songs, it's still one of their most varied releases and I think it goes a long way in representing the broader outlook that Mastodon have on their music which they always get credit for, but actually shit on with this. They come from The Melvins remember. | | 11 |  | Mastodon
Lifesblood
The goods, early on. This is just kind of a formality since these songs are already on spots 4 and 5 on this list, so consider it like a buffer or free space. I was hoping to listen to this in conjunction with Call/9 song demo/Slick Leg to compare the variations but it's not on YouTube as far as I can tell. These songs here though I always thought encapsulated the idea of a giant beast. Whether short or brooding, you could tell early on they were writing songs that didn't just feel like a lumbering beast, but gave you the image as well. I do consider this to be a better EP than Cold Dark Place. | | 12 |  | Mastodon
Cold Dark Place
Wasn't on the bandwagon with this, and I must be one of the few who actually feel kind of off-put about it. Toe to Toes is like sadness incarnate to me. It's an incredible song, but it's hard to listen to it when I do from time to time. | | 13 |  | Mastodon
Live at Brixton
A surprisingly decent setlist. It's like the band on shuffle. I wonder how hard it is bouncing between songs like that. And yeah, I would rather listen to this than a full playthrough of Once, so it fits this spot in the ranking. | | 14 |  | Mastodon
Once More 'Round the Sun
I probably like less than half of this, but it's still alright. Tread Lightly, High Road, T/T, Chimes at Midnight and Asleep are all pretty good/great. Diamond in the Witch House is a strong closer for this album as well, but I only listen to it here or there. Love the track and it's neat that it is still considerably different from others that they've done but I could see why people dislike it too. It wouldn't be the same without Scott Kelly and I appreciate they went full in with it with him at the end. If I were to rank closers, I would have this over Jaguar God. | | 15 |  | Mastodon
Slick Leg
Didn't Brann sing on one of these tracks? I think he said it in the Emperor of Sand documentary. I was going to put this over Sun, but it seems kind of silly in retrospect. | | 16 |  | Soundtrack (Film)
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film.
Fuck yea. | | 17 |  | Mastodon
The Workhorse Chronicles [DVD]
Why not. | | 18 |  | Mastodon
Jonah Hex: Revenge Gets Ugly EP
When you try to do something for other people outside your field and there's too much compromise. When they said "scoring the film" I thought there'd be more than 15 mins. of music. | |
Assemblage
11.11.21 | I actually had much more to say about Crack the Skye but I think sputnik cut me off.
Link to my list that got bumped off my profile: Scream Bloody Gore vs. Eaten Back to Life
https://www.sputnikmusic.com/list.php?memberid=1055694&listid=185726 | bgillesp
11.12.21 | My hot take:
8>9>10>11>2>1>7>6>3 | Assemblage
11.12.21 | What don't you like in particular about Emperor, bg? I don't think I've ever seen 3 last! | bgillesp
11.12.21 | I'll start with my disclaimer that my opinions on Mastodon are pretty backwards from most. Emperor of Sand was fine, but a little boring for me. Their early stuff was just even more boring for me. I actually like their new sound that many seem disappointed with (but I haven't listened to 3 in years, so I might change my mind a little if I relistened) | Relinquished
11.12.21 | “This is their instrumental and compositional peak. Every song is a new land, and is an album as expansive and diverse as can be”
I agree, but remembering when this came out I wasn’t a big fan of the vocals or the production. mid-00s production was awkward overall and I missed the burly vocals and instead they sing as if they were missing some teeth and the rest were filled in with chewing tobacco | Ebola
11.12.21 | WHITE
WHALE
HOLY
GRAIL | DoofDoof
11.12.21 | Top two are in the correct order yes | Demon of the Fall
11.12.21 | Mostly very based list to be fair. Nice work. | Assemblage
11.12.21 | Lol Relinquished, that's a pretty funny description but damn does that image fit lol. I remember absolutely loving Naked Burn from Leviathan for years because of the vocals, and then one day I just got completely turned off by it and I would consider it as one of my least favorites off Leviathan nowadays. But I still love all the vocal lines Brent brings on BM.
At Demon: can someone explain what the correct understanding of based means? I'm not offended even if it means it's a shittake on my part, I just see it around in so many contexts I never know what angle it is lol. | Assemblage
11.13.21 | Did a slight modification to the list and added the two main ep's and the live albums. Expanded the writeup for OMRTS. | Brock619
11.23.21 | 1 and 2 are absolutely right. I'd probably put Hunter next, imo. |
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