Mastodon
The Hunter

A band that has spoiled you from the start awaits each new album with baited breath, suspecting that a misstep is more likely than yet another perfect move. In the case of Mastodon, the test becomes more daunting than ever, having signed some of the most celebrated prog-metal masterpieces of the last decade (from "Leviathan" to "Crack the Skye"). Indeed, their new effort "The Hunter" leaves you puzzled right from the cover: a sort of carnivorous deer with a triple-toothed mandible that was actually crafted and painted by a wood artisan. What could it be?...

Rumors, a few days ago, described this album as the least prog and the most metal recorded so far by Brent Hinds' quartet, devoid of tracks over 6 minutes and with a more light-hearted approach than before. The first listen betrays a tangible desire to head towards more reassuring shores, with a tracklist of no less than 13 pieces that overall seem to be wrapped in a fairly American atmosphere, built on linear and immediate riffs and on choruses sung by multiple voices (Mastodon doing choirs??). The sensation is that of a self-referential project, where step by step leitmotifs and styles of previous works echo in a more digestible key, but also a kind of summary of twenty years of the metal scene, somehow metabolizing a synthesis of everything the genre has left in the collective imagination.

Not disagreeable as an operation, all in all. But where is the Mastodon-Style?

It takes six or seven careful replays to start appreciating the subtleties and get the less catchy tracks into your head. Beyond the fact that the sound production is of high quality and all the pieces are played and arranged with great precision, the blend that the four from Atlanta manage to create on this record is of great balance and doesn't give any sense of heaviness even when the basic models on which it is built become clear. The tracklist takes off gradually, to the point that the massive opening track "Black Tongue" chosen as the first single ultimately sounds among the most predictable. After the road-rock of "The Curl of the Burl" and the counterpointed "Blasteroid" that resumes certain passages of "Remission" and "Blood Mountain" alternating sunny major-key guitar riffs with angrily screamed refrains, things get more intriguing with the almost pinkfloydian space nuances of "Stargasm" and the tarantella of "Octopus Has No Friend", which employs certain typically Mastodon phrases. Passing through the banal "All the Heavy Lifting" and the haunting beautiful sludge-ballad "The Hunter", again tinged with pinkfloydian legacies in the solo lines, we arrive at "Dry Bone Valley" (with an absolutely USA sound and which seems to come out of a Queensryche record) and the fabulous "Thickening", rich in intriguing passages, rhythm changes, and especially a chorus that sticks from the first listen; certainly one of the best tracks. With the anomalous "Creature Lives", you temporarily enter a world of electronic sounds, choral voices, and laughter incredibly reminiscent of those in "Brain Damage" by the usual Floyd; then you return to earth to ride the tiger in a delusion of guitars and drums that can't be more metal ("Spectrelight"), dazzled by the hallucinatory visions of "Bedazzled Fingernails" which boasts vocoderized voices, theremin (!!!) flourishes, and arpeggios once again linked to impressions of "Blood Mountain". And finally, the superb evocative ballad "The Sparrow", which floats dreamily in a limbo of atavistic melancholies, concluding with anguished nostalgia as in the early Mastodon tradition for the first three albums.

Thirteen tracks that slip away with some hitches due to predictable episodes that are a bit out of place, but overall acceptable and at times engaging. Certainly nothing that seems likely to become epochal, also because the band already has a substantial resume and the desire to embrace a wider audience is evident (and legitimate).

"The Hunter" is a good work, which cut here and there would have been more cohesive and impactful. The Mastodon style is present more in the individual pieces than in the overall layout of the tracks. The properly prog veins that highlighted creative virtuosity give way to imaginary sensations and projections outward, with more contemplative moments than in previous records.