Mastodon - The Hunter

Mastodon is one of those bands that attracted my attention from the first time and made me gradually get stuck on them. So, some months ago, I found myself looking forward to listening to their new album right after the announcement of its upcoming release. What I felt after listening to "The Hunter"? Hmmm... hard to explain!
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\r\nWaiting for a "Remission"-style come-back, I was surprised by this unpredictable and crazy quartet from Georgia who evolved and experimented on new elements maintaining the band’s ’aura’ and ’personality’ at the same time.To begin with, "The Hunter" is a special album in many ways.We have to do with the first Mastodon album that is not related to a classical element while "Remission" (2002) was about fire, "Leviathan" (2004) was based on water and Moby Dick, "Blood Mountain" (2006) concerned earth and mythical beasts and "Crack The Sky" (2009) aether and travel through space."The Hunter" is also
\r\nthe second non-concept album after "Remission" while there is no certain lyrical and acoustic direction. Mastodon is one of the few bands that has three vocalists and in this album Troy Sanders, Brent Hinds and Brann Dailor combine their voices in harmony resulting in sometimes heavy, sometimes sweet but always interesting and unique sounds. It is also remarkable that the drummer, Brann Dailor, composes and sings a whole Mastodon song ("Creature Lives") and leads the vocals in more than two songs for the first time.
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\r\nInstrumentally, Mastodon fulfill again our expectations: the guitar riffs can shred or roar and in combination with the special effects give the impression of a guitarist who wants to get rid of an intense and suffocating madness with the help of his instrument. The bass is heavy and threatening all through the album while the drummer seems to be a creature with more than two arms showing no mercy and hitting restlessly against his drums.
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\r\nIn this album the songs have got different styles. For example,the first track, the melodic and dynamic "Black Tongue", one of my favourite of this CD I confess, reminds a lot of early Metallica and Slayer.In "Curl Of The Burl" Brent sounds a lot like Ozzy and the riffs are rock n roll- oriented while "Blasteroid", which could easily pass as Torche, is really a positive energy pill ("I wanna drink some fucking blood! I wanna break some fucking glass!"). "Stargasm" is a song with supernatural sound,  "Octopus Has No Friends" a strange melodic track where Mastodon’s sense of humour is evidend ,"Creature lives" floats over an epic mood and the riffs of "Sparrow" are psychedelic and recall Pink Floyd’s "Hey You". On the other hand, "Deathbound" (Deluxe Edition) is probably the song that belongs more to what we commonly call "The old Mastodon" with its ferocious vocals and explosive sound. The lyrics can be kinda stupid ("I killed a man ’cause he killed my goat" in "Curl Of The Burl")- but who told that this is a disadvantage, abstraction is always attractive- epic ("You can run to the sea, you can run to the forest" in"Black Tongue"), psychedelic or emotional as in "Creature Lives". We shouldn’t forget that
\r\nthe title of the album refers to the death of Hind’s brother who suffered a heart attack while hunting last December. A slight idea of this loss of the loved people exist in the slower songs, especially in the touching "Sparrow" where four words are repeated: "Pursue happiness with dilingense".
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\r\nThe "Hunter", obviously not an example of the cruelty and the brutality of the early Mastodon albums and ressembling more to the previous one "Crack The Skye", without many growlings but with intense music and sooth melodies is for sure one of the best albums of the year.
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\r\nHmmm...How about hunting with these amazingly genious guys? \r\n