Album Review: Mastodon – The Hunter

By: Brady Lavin

Mastodon - The Hunter

A large, prehistoric animal spots you. It takes a few lumbering, earth-shaking steps in your direction and then, unannounced, it breaks out into a gallop, charging at you and your fellow tribesmen, swinging its monstrous tusks back and forth, and trumpeting as it bears down on your position.

Yes, that is a description of a mastodon. It is also, incidentally, the feeling one gets while listening to the sludge/progressive metal band Mastodon‘s new album, The Hunter. Those lumbering steps were the last echoes of 2009’s Crack The Skye slower progressive metal fading away, making room for what is in a way a return to Mastodon’s thrashier roots while also being a step forward into new territory.

The blistering “Black Tongue” kicks off The Hunter with what any fan would hope for: heavy minor riffage with Brann Dailor’s frenetic drumming and bushman vocals about self-surgery and cauterization. What more could you ask for?

Well, you could ask for a groovy metal song about meth heads who go out into the forest looking for knots in trees to cut out and sell to furniture makers to buy more meth. And then Mastodon would immediately deliver that in the form of “Curl Of The Burl,” the second track on The Hunter.

The whole album plays out similar to that situation. There are plenty of hugely heavy, dark songs that are almost necessary to have as a metal band of any kind, but then Mastodon will bust out a goofier song, maybe called “The Octopus Has No Friends” or “Stargasm,” or maybe “Bedazzled Fingernails,” which is definitely an unexpected song title on a metal album.

Many of the tracks have the speed and intensity of Mastodon’s earlier albums like Blood Mountain and Leviathan, yet they retain the higher production value and a bit of the progressive metal tendencies of Crack The Skye. Instead of Skye‘s ten minute plus jams though, most of The Hunter are concise, hard driving metal songs.

The most unusual thing about The Hunter, though, is that instead of staying in minor, normally metal keys, Brent Hinds and company venture into “happier sounding” major keys and still manage to make it as metal and as heavy as anything they’ve done in the past. Take “Blasteroid” as an example. The song’s introduction is a riff in a major key, which moves into an incredibly catchy verse with tight harmony. Doesn’t sound like the description of a metal song, does it? Well, how about if the chorus is Brent Hinds screaming the hell out of “I wanna taste your fucking blood! I wanna paint your fucking ass!”? Yeah, it’s metal as all get out, and kind of funny, too. We can only guess what he means with that ass comment.

That’s what really defines this album. Heavy and fun. Humorous at times and metal as fuck. There is no Mastodon fan that will be disappointed with The Hunter, and you can quote me on that. Show me a Mastodon fan who doesn’t like it and I’ll fight him with The Hunter as the soundtrack. He will then have no choice but to agree with me and apologize for being such a fool.