Mastodon
The Hunter
Roadrunner Records
26 September 2011

by Hugh Platt

The Hunter is simultaneously Mastodon’s easiest record to throw yourself into, but perversely the hardest to pin down. Eschewing the concept-album framing-device the band have used since 2004, it shrugs off any attempts by reviewers to cling to any sense of ongoing narrative, or common aesthetic thread. Instead the record purposefully flits between the proggy, swirling tides of guitars the band navigated listeners through on Crack The Skye, and the crunchier, more immediate riffing that brought them to wider attention with their second album, Leviathan.

So yeah, you’re getting a nerdy-wordy review for this one. Tough tits, if you were hoping otherwise.

This lack of an overriding concept soon becomes an irrelevance as soon as it becomes apparent that The Hunter is no less dense – indeed, perhaps more so – than anything Mastodon have previously committed to tape. Where The Hunter separates itself from the rest of Mastodon’s catalogue is in the ease in which it allows its component musicians to highlight their individual talents without compromising their collective songwriting. The mammoth (sorry) talents of both Bill Kelliher and Brent Hinds are the most immediately apparent, from the rushing stream of riffs that nearly overwhelm the listener in ‘Blasteroid’, the wild and improvised solo’ing on ‘Black Tongue’, all the way through to the textured, swirling guitar lines present in ‘The Thickening’ and the album’s title-track.

But it’s the talents of Brann Dailor – who thankfully seems to have shrugged off the cruel and unnecessary epithets of the overlooked or the under-rated that so many writers on Mastodon seemed to grant him - that provide the roots to so much of The Hunter‘s sinewy power. While Kelliher and Hinds’ guitars provide the thick set, growing front to ‘All The Heavy Listening’, it is the litany of fills, frenetic bass drumming, and moody toms work of Dailor that provides the track with the menacing textures that elevate it among the finest of all Mastodon’s work to date. You can spin this record on random and you’ll never once fail to land on a track that doesn’t highlight why Dailor’s stickwork is increasingly compared to the likes of Neil Peart – among his generation of drummers, few can claim to be peers with Brann Dailor.

But it’s with ‘The Creature Lives’ that Mastodon truly side-step expectations and spin out into truly barking-mad territory. Starting like the intro music to a new Flash Gordon film, ‘The Creature Lives’s opening is littered with sinister-sounding cosmic chuckles, lurking behind the ascending groan of space organs and alien bleeping. To compound the weirdness, it fades out into what can only be described as what Mastodon would sound like if they ever attempted to write a Christmas song. A curiously uplifting bass line, calming choral vocals, and a celestial guitar solo see Mastodon just one set of sleighbells short of creating the best Santa Claus ditty there never was. That might sound like it veers ludicrously close to throwing the entire album out of joint, but Mastodon make it sound just so damn….majestic that you can only applaud their audacity for attempting – and succeeding – at something so bold

Listen to ALL of The Hunter by Mastodon:

That The Hunter immediately throws the listener into the breakneck speeds of ‘Spectrelight’ after that captures the duality of this record perfectly. Scott Kelly’s guest vocals are perhaps less distinctive than his spots on previously Mastodon albums, but the sheer onslaught of power that ‘Spectrelight’ presents – three minutes and ten seconds of bone-gnawing menace – squashes such nit-picking criticism under the weight of its unending aggression.

There’s no doubt about it – The Hunter is one of the albums of 2011, and further cements Mastodon’s position as not only a band capable of pushing ever progressive notions of songwriting and musicianship onto their audience, but simultaneously connect with larger and larger more popularist audiences at that. Mastodon are the polar opposite to – nay, they are the antidote to - all the lowest-common denominator metal bands that people hold up as proof that if you want to make it big, then you also have to make it stupid. The Hunter represents all that is best about metal, not just as far as 2011 is concerned, but for the entire genre full-stop.

6/6

Sounds like: Everything Mastodon have done up to this point in time, with a touch of added Pink Floyd just before the end
Top tracks: All The Heavy Lifting, The Creature Lives, Spectrelight

Mastodon – The Hunter tracklisting: 
Black Tongue
Curl of the Burl
Blasteroid
Stargasm
Octopus Has No Friends
All the Heavy Lifting
The Hunter
Dry Bone Valley
Thickening
The Creature Lives
Spectrelight (ft. Scott Kelly)
Bedazzled Fingernails
The Sparrow