Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

I’ll get this very important preface out of the way early: I think Mastodon are massively overrated. While they are credited with making some of the more cutting edge progressive metal and honing out a uniquely sludge-y yet melodic sound with their first albums, to me they didn’t ever really do anything that other sludge metal bands or other progressive metal bands weren’t already doing, and their closest contemporary I can think of off the top of my head, Baroness, has accomplished just what Mastodon have, and in a more conscious way. What I think Baroness does quite well that Mastodon have struggled with is tasteful, fitting songwriting. While Mastodon can compose a monster of a song and take it all over the place with elegance and intensity quite well, I have a hard time wanting to go along with them on that ride a lot of the time because I feel like, despite what their eccentricities portray, they don’t really have that many tricks up their sleeves. I have a hard time understanding what it is that got Mastodon so big in the metal world compared to their contemporaries. I understand how people can really like Mastodon, but I really don’t get how so much of the metal world has latched on to them and worshiped them like gods because I don’t think what they do is really that special. I don’t say this to trash Mastodon at all; I do like their music for the most part, I know and acknowledge how incredibly talented all of them are at playing their respective instruments, I even thought their polarizing 2011 album The Hunter was pretty alright. I just bring this up for context because I generally haven’t lauded any of their previous work, certainly not to the extent their fans and much of the music press has, and that is definitely worth noting for a discussion on my opinion of their newest work. For reference, my favorite Mastodon albums are Crack the Skye and Blood Mountain (which I know are favorites for a lot of fans, so my taste can’t really be THAT dissimilar to the average Mastodon fan), but even those albums have sloppy, draggy, and awkwardly arranged parts that sometimes make it a challenge to keep listening through them. Remission, the one that the super old-school, we-want-just-heavy-and-nothing-else fans keep clamoring for a sequel to, is one that I enjoy too, but being so one-dimensional and also sharing the same weaknesses as all their subsequent albums, I don’t see it as something Mastodon should have stuck to as though that was where they were strongest or as though their subsequent style was a failed experiment or something. And as far as their branching out is concerned, I quite enjoyed their follow-up to The Hunter, the much more focused and gripping Once More ‘Round the Sun. On that album, I think Mastodon did a good job of emphasizing what they are indeed good at and wrote some much sweeter hooks, choruses, and riffs than they had on their previous album. As much as I don’t think it should be that big of a deal, Emperor of Sand is definitely the biggest metal release of this year so far. I already mentioned my opinion of the band’s music going in to this record and I have to say that, for me, Mastodon’s 7th studio album is their worst effort yet, with emphasis on the word “effort” there.

It’s been a little over a week since Mastodon’s 7th studio album was released and a lot of things about it still have me baffled: the direction in which they chose to take this thing, the uncannily lazy and seemingly uninspired songwriting, the praise it’s received, etc. (I’ll get into all that stuff). What sets this album apart from and below the rest of Mastodon’s discography is their strange affair with post-grunge (yeah, the cheesy-as-movie-nachos, radio-bait shit that all your favorite alternative metal bands from middle school doped their music up on). While “Show Yourself” was, when it came out as a single, met with some skepticism from fans and criticized as basic “dad rock” by many people, I didn’t think it was too bad; it’s biggest faults were just being super formulaic, overstaying its welcome a bit, and (in the context of the album as a whole piece) being placed kind of awkwardly after the very straightforward and heavy opening track, which disrupts the momentum the album started with. On the topic of that opening song, “Sultan’s Curse”, it’s a nice opener in that it sets what would be a nice, usual Mastodon mood. The song moves from start to finish without grabbing any bells or whistles, but for how Mastodon-ically typical it is and how lacking of a single compelling central musical idea it is, I kind of wish the band applied some of the experimentation they did on Once More ‘Round the Sun to this song.

The album really just goes bumpily downhill after the introductory songs, “Precious Stones” carries on that bad-tasting dad-post-grunge/sludge blend they built its preceding track with, but is blessed with none of the catchiness that post-grunge relies on and none of the intensity that usually makes Mastodon’s music worth listening to. I can kind of see what they were going for on that song, but the pieces just didn’t fit and they didn’t look good on their own. On “Steambreather” it seems like Mastodon know how little true sludge metal they’d been giving their fans until this point, and they seem to overcompensate with a super isolated, primitive, down-tuned guitar riff. But even to this, they can’t seem to commit, and they fall right back into a pit of formulaic nacho cheese with the alt-rockin’ chorus that makes me think I’m listening to Foo Fighters or something.

“Roots Remain” picks the album up off its hands and knees with its building acoustic introduction and the pummeling groove it kicks into. The chorus on this one is a bit less corny and sounds like it might have been a leftover from their 2014 album; its beginning few minutes are a bit formulaic but the halfway mark brings in a nice, mystical, echo-y guitar passage that smoothly leads the song to the exit. “Word to the Wise” tries again for a similar feel with a sludgy heaviness and some soaring vocals that lead to a chorus that reminds me of those from Trivium’s last album (Silence in the Snow). It’s a decent song and I enjoy the chorus a lot more than the pre-chorus’ poorly tossed in high notes, but it’s this song that shows Mastodon’s true intentions on this album, to widen their appeal but do just enough to keep from spreading so thin that they start losing support.

The following track, “Ancient Kingdom”, is one greasy slice of cheese pizza though and almost sounds like such a wannabe stadium rock song with those goofy church bells in the back of the mix. Mastodon seem to think they give it enough dynamic with the minor key-focused chorus but it is not nearly an absorbent enough paper towel to dab off the rest of the song’s musical grease. “Clandestiny” is just jumbled as hell and I truly don’t know what Mastodon was trying for on this song. It just sounds like another verse-chorus-verse track coasting on everything the previous tracks had greased the tracks with. I like the little synthesizer motif in the middle of the song, but it doesn’t really fit in the song or tie together whatever Mastodon is maybe going for with those horribly lazy choruses.

The third single, “Andromeda”, that shows up at the tail end of the album is a song harkens back to Once More ‘Round the Sun better than any other song on the album and actually succeeds at being a catchy and mystical piece of work that the rest of the album doesn’t seem to deserve. Mastodon deliver some more typical sludge and unique guitar/drum work with “Scorpion Breath” and it’s one of the better moments on the album, but it seems like it’s just there to appease the people who want Remission again and the people who might not have been fond of the preceding string of cringe-worthy choruses. And, of course, it’s the second-shortest song on the album so it’s gone before it has any time to go anywhere or make any real effect on the album.

The album closes with its longest song, “Jaguar God” and it involves a lot of moving parts that don’t exactly piece together into a functioning machine. The moody acoustic guitar intro, supplemented with that subtle piano so you know it’s somber, leads into a better, brooding, bass-heavy section that manages to dazzle a little bit, but also takes a little spoonful of corn syrup that keeps the power Mastodon later exhibit held back in uncomfortable territory. The song, and the album, end sort of anticlimactically and leave a lot to be desired out of the concluding piece and the music that preceded it.

Since this album’s release I’ve seen a lot of praise for it and a lot of it even holding this album at the level of their earlier work. What really grinds my gears when I see it though, is people’s defending this album and the band’s direction on this album as “evolving” or “maturing” to the prime form of Mastodon. Just as Suicide Silence was just ripping off their favorite nu metal albums and definitely not maturing on their new album, Mastodon is not maturing either by just plugging their shit into the post-grunge formula and tossing it in a blender. Mastodon were already an incredibly musically accomplished group basically when they started and the way this album reeks of sheer laziness is the opposite of embodying what an ambitious and growing band are. I do understand how plenty of people have found a liking to this album, as it does still bring forth the thickly produced wall of guitar sludge and spastic drumming we’ve come to love and expect from Mastodon, but to hold this up as one of their most important, and one of metal’s most important, records in recent history, to me, is just asinine. I acknowledge that my perspective on Mastodon is quite different from much of the metal community’s and I can see what people enjoy about them, but I can’t see why kids love this Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Like cereal that’s been in the milk too long, simply adding some sugar to this album does not save it from being the soggy and unhealthy part of this year’s breakfast and I hope Mastodon don’t take too long to pour a fresh new bowl of sludgy-o’s for themselves. I don’t like the food at my university’s dining hall at all, but one thing I like is that they have some off-brand cinnamon sugar cereal that doesn’t skimp on the sugar. When I do go there I eat it dry because I grew up eating milk and cereal separately, like a heathen apparently, and it’s one of the best things that this crap school food service has to offer. I’m going to the grocery store to get my own food and ingredients today though. While I’m there, I have to pick up some cheese, because unfortunately I can’t add the cheese heard on this album to a ham and salami omelet.