10 Albums You Should Listen to Before You Die - Crack The Skye

I got a lot of questions about whether or not this list would cover multiple genres. Does Sarah Palin's vagina smell of moose dick? I've already made a giant jump from (THE) Arcade Fire to Mastodon.

Now that you're all nice and shocked let's get into it! Now that non-metal rock fans, mainstream, publications and of course hipsters have caught on you don't need an underground metal fan to tell you that Mastodon absolutely rocks. Mastodon has a penchant for creating concept albums, but this one is just way over the top. Their 04 release of Leviathan was based heavily on Herman Melville's Moby Dick, but But when you're making a record about a kid who experiments with astral travel and then goes through a wormhole and meets Rasputin and Rasputin enters his body to escape assassination, or something, you've pushed this whole thing way, way further than it needed to be pushed. In the end this is a non-factor since the music hits as hard as it does.

The band's never really settles into a locked-in groove. Rather they make the music skip and dive and wander until the listener is lost in it. When the band switches up time-signatures, something it does often, it's not to show off math-rock chops; it's to rip the rug out from under you, to keep you uncomfortable.

The seven songs on Crack the Skye stretch over about 50 minutes, which to be completely honest is fairly lengthy but every riff and roar flows perfectly into the next until the listener totally lost in a tsunami of riffs; hard to imagine checking the time remaining on your iPod when one is that deeply entrenched in sound. Mastodon operates by unleashing these huge, blistering tracks that journey over peaks and valleys and ditches and oceans before leaving you spinning, and unaware of what exactly you are. It's just that Mastodon's arsenal of weapons is different from literally everybody else; instead of demi-classical guitar interludes and blazing twin-guitar leads and thuggish hey-hey-heys, they've got soupy quasi-jazz trundles and clusterfuck distortion-explosions and quick bursts of time-honored Southern-rock melody.

And so the most powerful moments on Crack the Skye are almost always the most direct. On the title track, Neurosis' Scott Kelly shows up for a gut-busting guest-vocal, roaring over the tunes of the band's complex thunder-crunch, and near the end, Kelly growls out the most serious lyric on the whole record: "Momma, don't let them drag her down/ Please tell Lucifer he can't have this one." And then it hits you. This album is not about astral travel, or Rasputin taking over someone's body, it's about the drummer and mastermind behind most of the lyrics Brann Dailor's attempt to accept the way-too-early death of his sister Skye. If he has to create completely different universes to do it, then so be it. This isn't metal because it has death grunts and blast beats, this is metal because it's heavy, boundary-pushing music with more attitude than most people can handle.

Best Songs
This album can only be described as an experience, so listening to it in pieces is useless. Get the whole thing.