Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

For me they peaked at Leviathan > Crack The Skye. Those 3 albums are absolutely stellar in every way. Remission is very close to those too and could easily be included really. The Hunter and Once More are pretty great albums and there are some real gems on them but overall they are just not as good as what came before. I still enjoy those albums though, but my fav is the holy trinity of Leviathan > Crack The Skye.

 

I've actually only listened to Remission for the first time a few days ago. Really great stuff - there are a few songs on Remission that I actually wish were on Leviathan since I think they would fit (musically) perfectly and compliment the rest of the album....

So far - Remission/Leviathan/Blood Mountain are a great trilogy. I'm going through albums 1 a day right now....

 

I have but they never grabbed me like these bands. I loved once more also
Recommend a great enslaved album?

 

I would start here

Below the Lights
Isa
Ruun

their discography is very strong overall but they are even less commercial than Opeth

Enslaved discography

 

Thanks listened to a few tracks and they are still not for me. Vocals are bad IMO

 

Below The Lights is a great place to start. I had to get used to the vocals, too. Now I think they're indispensable to their sound.

 

The way you grab Opeth fans for Enslaved is with RIITIIR. If they try that record and it doesn't work, chances are they'll never get into any other Enslaved albums, no matter how revered. It's their most Opethian moment in terms of dynamic balance and clean singing vs. screams.

 

Agreed 100%.

 

Amazon Canada now has the CD for pre-order....

Emperor Of Sand: Mastodon: Amazon.ca: Music

 

I think I'm going to sit back and wait for the feedback before I pull the trigger on this one. I've got every Mastodon release except for "Remission" but I can't get into their last one at all, as many times as I've tried. "The Hunter" wasn't bad but "Once More Round the Sun" loses my interest about a quarter of the way through and my mind starts drifting......

What was I just taking about?

 

I'm with you in this unfortunately.

I recently listened to every studio album of theirs - and then did it again...

Remission -> Crack The Skye - those 4 albums are so great.

The Hunter - I didn't enjoy it until song 11 (out of 13) and that was too bad. Once Round - again - I didn't enjoy it very much either aside from 1 or maybe 2 songs.

And since I listen on vinyl - I hate when I don't enjoy full albums.

Since I listened to them all in a row - it's startling - how much they changed the lyric/vocal style. The lyrics used to be seemingly random - very short - aggressive and essentially screamed. I have a similar style of singing in my metal band - and one thing I've learned (since I have another 'melodic singling' project) - is that when you're making music to scream too - you are much more free to do what you want. It's essentially atonal and can go with anything metal.

When you are 'singing' then it's so much different. That's what I hear in their last 2 albums.

Plus - starting with Track 1 of The Hunter - it's like - WTH is Brann?!? Seriously - it sounds like they got a different drummer. Someone who's scared to drum and fill like crazy. Or, because he's singing now on a bunch of songs - it has to be more tame for live performances.

At the end of the Hunter - I thought "I bet there are more drum fills in the SONG "Blood And Thunder" than in the entire Hunter Album.

So while the first song released for Emperor of Sand was very good - their second release with the ... tame sound - has me really worried it's just going to be another nicely sung album that's tightly controlled and doesn't seem to have any aggression left anymore....

 

I wish they had never gotten the taste for and learned to sing "properly" - now there is no turning back.

I had high hopes when I heard "Sultan's Curse", but "Show Yourself" brought them down again...

 

I feel the same - Sultan's Curse sounded great to me, Show Yourself less so. I first saw them play on the Blood Mountain tour and they were fantastic, and Crack the Skye was even better in my view. Leviathan and Remission I love as well. Hunter, however, has never really clicked with me - it just seems, well, lazy when compared with CTS. I know they found it tiresome to play those long, proggy songs live, but to me, anything they've done since sounds hollow and rather unimaginative.

Love the look of the new album, though, and I'm tempted to think there will be some good songs on it. It's telling, however, that I own both Live at Brixton and Once More Around the Sun and don't think I've listened through either of them. Sure, there is less room for the loud stuff nowadays (three kids apparently are noisy enough already), but it also highlights the fact that nothing really grabbed me on either record...

 

I enjoy once more around the sun, in an alternative universe it could be a lost Ozzy album.

 

i might be in the minority here, but i think this band just gets better with every release. The Hunter is one of my favorite albums of the last 10 years. i'm quite excited to hear the entire album.

 

For me, I don't think it's a matter of better or worse overall - just different. Obviously their music is evolving in a way that they like as every interview over the last bunch of years - they stress how the latest album (at the time) is the best ever and the direction they are taking is exactly what they needed to do.

I just listened to theLive At The Aragon show - and you can really see how Crack The Skye was the transition between the two styles. At the end of the show as soon as they launch into their older material it's really, really different.

I'm going to listen to the Brixton show next - as that has a decent mix of songs from every album I'll be able to reevaluate some of the newer stuff better I think when it's played back to back with some older stuff.

As for being in the minority haha I think Mastodon has such a limited following on this site - we're all in the minority together

 

I don't like remission as an album but it does have some killer songs and moments. Leviathan is my favorite album to smoke to. Love all of them up to and including once more round the sun. Been listening to mastodon a lot since these 2 new songs hit, we love them both at my house.

 

That album was when they started singing melodically, so yes, the turning point. On early TV live performances of songs live "Oblivion" and "Divinations" those vocals sounded god-awful, and I was thinking "what are they doing!", it sounded like amateur hour. Kind of intersting thing to learn what is essentially a "new instrument" and start using as your main one that long into your career and after you are already famous "on another instrument". They learned quick though, and as I said, now there is no turning back, for better or worse.

 

LP available for preorder on Amazon Canada now.

 

I listened to Call Of The Mastodon today - first time ever. I have to say - I'm really impressed. Along with Remission, some of the tracks could be right off of Leviathan or Blood Mountain. Sounds great too - you can tell they recorded this around the same time of Leviathan/Blood Mountain. Sounds like the same studio setup...

 

Have to disagree here, that album doesn't have any tracks that sound like Blood Mountain to me, been a while since I listened to it but it sounded like a mix of grind and death? I dunno, the typical sound I think of from Earache releases. I can see the connection of Call and Remission, maybe even to Leviathan but it's a different band when we get to Blood, IMO.

Can't even be close to the same time period as these are old tracks recorded before they were signed to a major. Think these are from year 2000 and earlier, Leviathan and Blood Mountain are 2004 and 2006 respectively

 

All the songs (except the title track) were originally released on the "Slick Leg" single and the Lifesblood EP which both preceded Remission. All songs appear on Call Of The Mastodon in remixed form compared to those previous relases. So it is a sort of compilation album of early tracks.

 

I read an interview with Brett Hinds in Guitar Player magazine a couple of years ago, and he just rips Once More 'Round the Sun, saying that he had barely any writing input in the album, that the songs were simplistic and that he didn't like them. It was one of the weirdest interviews I had ever read.

 

Oops - my bad!

Before listening to Call Of I looked it up on Wiki - and I thought it said all those early songs were re-recorded..... it says they were re-ordered.

Funny thing though - how reading that before listening totally slanted my listening experience. I'll be listening to all the early albums again soon. Good stuff regardless.

 

Something like this?

Like I said, there’s not much of my DNA on the album. I only wrote four songs. My songs are much more along the vein of Crack the Skye, so if you want to know anything about me in the future, I write more long cascading psychedelic epic stuff, and Bill and Brann write faster, snappier, lumbering heavy-metal type songs.

Ha ha and this

And then I met Brann and Bill, and they were really, really, really into heavy metal. And ever since then, I’ve been trying to get Mastodon to not be such a heavy metal band, because I f**king hate heavy metal, and I don’t want to be in a heavy metal band.