I hesitated for nearly a full year before finally giving Mastodon’s latest full length offering Blood Mountain a listen. To be perfectly honest, I never bothered listening to this band when they were signed to Relapse Records. After scoping out a couple of glowing reviews from a couple of cock rock "metal" zines, I realized two things; I wasn’t going to like their music and there was no point in subjecting myself to the pain and misery of having to try to sit through one of their albums to review it. Unfortunately, my ignoring the album has done little to stop the flood of people proclaiming Mastodon to be the "saviors" of metal, so I’m here to set the record straight so lets get this shit over with.

The first thing I noticed when I picked up this album is the artwork. I don’t know if the members of this band bothered doing much research but the mastodon was actually an elephant-like creature, not a three headed wolf with antlers. I don’t know what the fuck that’s supposed to symbolize, but to me it just looks the scribbling of a fucked up crack head. It’s even stupider than the antler headed man, corpse bride artwork portrayed on Hate Eternal’s I, Monarch. I’m not sure if they’re aware but the name "mastodon" actually means "nipple teeth", which… you know what, make your own joke for that one, it’s just too easy.

Shortly after pressing play for the first time a loud noise echoed throughout my house, it wasn’t the "rocking" riffs, drum beats or yells on the CD, it was the sound of my uncontrollable laughter. What the fuck is this shit? After all of the stuff I’ve read about this band being so progressive and so heavy and so catchy, I was starting to expect the music to be, you know… good, or at the very least metal. If this is metal, then I’m a fucking ballerina.

The music Mastodon play contains a lot of strange time signatures and timings, with a sludge guitar tone, with a rock-styled song structure. There’s nothing new or inventive in the song writing or guitar playing, it’s pretty average stuff. The vocals… all I can say is… find a day job and quit being in a band, guys. On the track "Circle Of Cysquatch", which is the gayest song title I’ve ever heard of, they actually employ the "Darth Vader fan" vocal technique. You know when you’ve got a fan going, and you speak into it your voice gets all choppy because of the fan blades, and you decide to say "LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER!" into the fan because of the funny effect it makes? That’s what it sounds like the geniuses in Mastodon did. It’s funny when you do it in your house with no one around, but when you record it and put it on an album it makes you sound like a fucking moron singing into a fan.

Bottom line is the music of Mastodon is similar to the new offerings from In Flames, Arch Enemy, Children Of Bodom, Slipknot and similarly limp wristed man-butt bangers in that it’s dull, unimaginative and very "average." There’s nothing in the material to satiate the blood lust of the die hard metal fan, but there’s enough here to capture the interest of the MTV "metal" crowd. Metal should be angry, it should make you want to head butt your mother and dropkick the elderly, this new shit just makes me sleepy and bored. The music of this nu breed of metal bands is going to prove to be a fad, like hair metal was in the 80s. Sure, there’ll be people 10 years from now talking about how good Mastodon was "back in the day", but those same people will have tits and carry a purse. If you have balls and claim to be a heterosexual I strongly urge you to punch yourself in the face until you knock yourself out while blaring Slayer’s Reign In Blood for daring to listen to this shit and being a big enough loser to actually like it. Speaking of… fuck this stupid band and this entire nu wave of shitty metal trend, I’m gonna go listen to Slayer while finger banging your sister.

Written By: Teufel