Mastodon
The Hunter

"Click". My trusty metal remote pointed at my ever-reliable metal television. "Click". I can't decide. There are quite a few crappy shows. I just can't make up my mind, no. I must watch some of them to get an idea.

Well, I tried, but I found a bunch of things they had canceled some time ago (do you remember how fun the Anthrax channel was about thirty years ago? Well now they've launched a new format called "old geezers on the rise" in close collaboration with the Megadeth channel, and I can't even begin to describe the laughs I had), or newer channels that repeat the same old stuff for at least 6 or 7 years because when it was time to change, the ratings slightly dropped and the program's producers freaked out and decided to take 8 steps back (like on the Machine Head channel, now there's a new program whose opening theme is a medieval choir recorded in the Green Day studio).

Around midnight, I'm about to give in to boredom and sleep, so I get up to grab myself something to drink to perk me up, and when I return, I sit on the remote, and the TV tunes in. My ears immediately perk up. Damn, the Mastodon channel! I remember that the last program I saw produced by these 4 guys, I think it was called "Crack The Skye", really blew my mind, so I decide to stay tuned. The opening theme ("Black Tongue") is truly a classic, with all the trappings: flying harmonies, clean vocals, bass regurgitations in some fills, slightly odd time signatures, but it still ends up making me yawn a bit. "Damn" I say to myself, "are we already at the end of the line?" But instead, the four hosts, long-bearded and wearing swimwear, hit off with an anthem ("Curl Of The Burl" they repeat in the chorus) that immediately wakes me up, these stonerblacksabbath sounds, I smell the '70s, with a steady groove that breaks bones.

But... but... there's always a but, but it's everywhere if you look closely. And I'm watching and listening. For a good 7 minutes, I fall asleep. Damn. I knew it. There we go again. Another show with good premises that ends up shitty because of too many carpenters building monster heads with many mouths. But then a guitar legato sent into space and returned astride an "Octopus Has No Friends" wakes me up yet again, the chorus is a liquid melody that breaks the space-time continuum (it must be the sleep, but I hear a poli-cesting echo), choruses rising in an electric sky in constant tension, without pause. And then churning out melodies that make you regret that the Queens Of The Stone Age fell apart a couple of years ago is no small feat, and with "Dry Bone Valley" the evidence is clear, they kick ass, if I'm not mistaken, even a Joshua Homme look-alike, Brann Dailor, sings, not content with just drumming. At some point (the moment when "Creature Lives"), they even whip out synthetic keyboards from who knows where to adorn a cracked chorus. A moment later, the usual Scott Kelly comes in to make the vocal cords go. And how beautiful this delirious finale is, where the hunter transforms into a sparrow and leaves the cage among acoustic melodies and electric stomps.

The end credits roll, and the only really big flaw I can find is that one of the producers is this guy, Mike Elizondo, who I had seen before with a white rapper, blond and somewhat stupid, in fact, this sound is so polished it irritates me a bit.

Tired, I sink into the chair, content and at the same time hopeful that the next format these four bring out will return to complete glory, so it never makes me fall asleep; the growth is evident. 

And then tomorrow I saw that on the Opeth channel, they are showing a movie that looks like it's from the '70s.

Click.