Mastodon
Medium Rarities

They lay hell out for you neatly on the table, they carve it with those calloused and fiery fingers, compulsively plucking strings and tormenting drumsticks. And you willingly plunge into it, take a bath in those thermal waters ready to emerge improved, invigorated. You let yourself be devoured by the leviathan, offering no resistance.

But that wasn't enough for them anymore. They poured a rainbow syrup over it that not everyone swallowed willingly. Sugar isn't always pleasing, especially when mixed with bile.

The mammoth's latest offspring is a two-headed antichrist, one of a monster and one of an infant (Fallen Torches). And while you sweat in the incandescent waves, you wonder about those almost Apollonian flashes of light. To whom they speak, what they aim to demonstrate.

On their twentieth birthday, the four brutes from Atlanta gave themselves a gift. A journey of comprehensible vanity to declare how talented they are, more talented than already thought. They put the masto-dong on the table to demonstrate that even behind the latest pop-metal records, there are extreme sessions of musical gymnastics. It's just that they've lined everything, and those grueling repetitions feel a bit less than before, but in truth, they are even more exhausting than before.

The message is this, a warning, a clarification. "Look, Jaguar God is no less complex than Capillarian Crest. And even that so radio-friendly single is a hell of notes."

The collection of artifacts is, in fact, not merely archival; it's not a folder full of random stuff. There is a precise argumentative selection that aims to be a decentered look at this thus sweaty twenty years.

The tracks offered in instrumental versions are, in short, a defense of the latest works, those less unanimously received (and indeed there are no instrumentals from the early records, which would be pleonastic).

The covers support the opposite side of the discourse, that openness to what is not metal (Feist, Flaming Lips) that perhaps prevents them from enjoying a deserved, small monument praised by old-school metalheads. That psychedelic foolishness that makes them somewhat clowns in constant parody of the genre's moldy clichés. A tomfoolery confirmed in pieces already published elsewhere and collected here, like Atlanta and Cut You Up with a Linoleum Knife. Let's not take ourselves too seriously.

A bit of heterogeneous material, from the icy soundtrack of Game of Thrones to the gritty remake of Metallica's Orion, which identifies a decidedly broad expressive spectrum. But this is the dilemma that haunts them. Too much stuff, too many aspirations, too much potential and too little time to unravel it, between one tour and another and frequent records, a desire to reach a non-minor audience. From boasting that can't get any more prog to delicate melodies, everything layered, condensed into four-minute songs to please everyone. It's not easy.

This compilation, enriched with some hard punches delivered live, is the explosion of the object that reveals all its most intimate details and also identifies its editing mistakes.

My message to the band: take your time, let all that lava you have in your hands and hearts settle. Don't be afraid to return to 13-minute songs. Let the strings breathe, unravel the skein. Now that everything is still, you have the necessary time to do justice to your greatness.