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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Ol’e Nessie - Mastodon (Remission. Relapse Records, 2002)
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Australopithecus -Intronaut (Prehistoricisms. Century Media Records, 2008)
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Capillarian Crest - Mastodon (Blood Mountain. Warner Bros Records, 2006)
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Oh My Fucking God - Strapping Young Lad (City. Century Media Records, 1997)
This right here is my kind of hangover track. Now I have to go and play coffee shop music at my work (yes, a coffee shop) in a few hours. Someone please fucking kill me now.
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Extreme Metal Hunks
Mikael Åkerfeldt
Hot Because: Remember how I counted one of the reasons Martin lopez was hot was because he played drums on My Arms, Your Hearse? No (then read the fucking LINK!)?
Well this guy wrote My Arms, Your Hearse, an album so artistically well rendered that people actually are still discussing the true poetic meaning of the lyrics and whether or not the song arrangements should be considered when analyzing such a heart-felt MASTERPIECE (which they should)! This guy also wrote every subsequent Opeth song which basically means that he sat down on more than one occasion and wrote out some beautiful if not a tad bit depressing poetry (aka, the best kind). He can play the guitar like a motherfucker and has a vocal range that at times is reminiscent of a rural bard or that of a mythological beast that was made by a large group of Gods only to turn on them all and rip their fucking heads off. The man’s vocal work is so consistently good that we could refer to him as the Celine Dion of Death Metal – but we WON’T.
Ideal Date: The park. A wicker basket. Mikael and you. The two of you sit down for a picnic in the park complete with song birds in the background and a soft wind that blows through the trees that all culminates in a serendipitous madrigal influenced by nature itself. Mikael sings you a song off of Damnation and then feeds you some home made Kladdkaka (it’s a Swedish brownie. You never had one? Look it up. They’re fucking amazing).
Then, just as you finish your wondrous meal, you look to the heavens and notice the clouds are coming in - hard. The sky, a once clear and idyllic shade of blue has turned to a haunting tone of obsidian black.
The song birds and faggy tree winds are replaced with thunderous double kick pedals and a choir of pinch harmonics.
Mikael looks you directly in the eye as he unhinges his jaw and consumes your entire head, ripping it off in a bloody mess that would make a Takashi Miike horror film look like a pussy. Blood pours down you severed neck as you raise the devil horns to a sky that is now filled with the white light of lightning. It’s the most romantic and metal thing that has ever happened.
And this happens every second weekend for you two. I recommend you bring a photographer the third time.
Deal Breaker: Considering how self-indulgent his recent work with Opeth has been, chances are good that he can’t be bothered during the “creative process.” So he might get really moody and snobby every so often throughout the year. Plus he probably snores.
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Extreme Metal Hunks:
Martin Lopez
Hot Because: He played drums for My Arms, Your Hearse.
….
Alright, fine. There is more to him than that by why would it matter? The man was a part of My Arms, Your Hearse! An album that is as “pretty” as death metal is allowed to get! And just look at the man (I apologizes for the small photo but it was the largest one I could find without putting more than 10 minutes effort into it).
The man belongs in magazines with the title Spanish Super Hunk preceding his name. A mix of Uruguayan, Spanish, AND Swedish blood, Lopez has selfishly absorbed all the hottest aspects of these genes to the point where it has become weaponized.
Ideal Date: You’re just finishing your shift at the local diner - it’s late and all you could use is a nice back rub. As you are about to take off the uniform you notice a shadow at the front door. Moments away from yelling at an incoming customer for being selfish for entering a restaurant that is five minutes away from closing, you realize it’s not some fat, bald American with bad skin, but the tall and dark Martin Lopez.
He comes in, ask how you was your day (and MEANS IT!) and calmly places his hand on your shoulder. You quiver at the knees while he picks you up with the strength expected in your modern-day Spanish Super Hunk and carries you off into the night, where he’ll demonstrate just what double-kicks and proggy time signatures can do for a man’s endurance.
(This happens everytime you work, from here on out)
Deal Breaker: Left his band for “health reasons” which either means he is lazy or legitimately weak. Word is he hurt his back. What kind of a man under the age of 45 hurts his back? Seriously.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Bone Marrow - Protest the Hero (Fortress. Underground Operations, 2008)
Rules for the Modern Prog band # 014 – A balance must be made between the katty worlds of art (aka, personal masturbation) and audience pandering (which is more of a strange sense of molestation if I am set on sticking with such a metaphor…). SO, Brevity is a virtue for those that can wield it without blinding themselves by the rapid-fire bukkake of their own ego - do it if you have the mind for it, but stay the fuck away from anything under 7 minutes if you’re an easily bored musician with cronic masturbation syndrome.
Prog is a genre that paradoxically thrives in the minds of the eternally patient and the consistently stoned - what a prog song lacks in concise pop sensibility it makes up in cognizant length and at times (most) unabashed wanking. What that means is that while absorbing a fanbase that can at times (few) be diverse and intelligently free thinking in rejecting Pop Standards (and all its apparent EVIL!) they often alienate another larger fanbase that actually have jobs which means they’re short on time but have money!
So the only way for any band out in the modern world of digital downloads and VH1 Nostalgic Clusterfucks can only land a proper foot in the door in the elaborate music world that is PROG!!!!@!#$!@$!@!!%&^&!!!!!! is by streamlining what once was Progressive Rock. This means the 20 minute long overtures are violently chopped down to what is basically a 3-4 minute musical representation of a cummy, steaming pile of the artists’ musical and poetic Id.
So to complicate that - Prog, by the defining quality of the genre, is difficult to condense. This is due to two reasons 1) those that start venturing into prog do so to free up the song writing for a thin sense of artistic and creative expression and experimentation that all equals out to really really really really long instrumentals and maybe interesting use of “musical landscapes” if the musicians gets tired from their long, complex, multi-rhythmic riffs and need some time for their fingers to stop curling into irreversible carpal tunnel. Although this is what many of the genre’s critics request from the genre as a whole, by taking away their open time to jackoff Prog musicians will produce a product that sounds like a young Beethoven with a bad case of cocaine induced ADDHD. And 2) Rush already wrote and produced Moving Pictures back in 1981, so it’s recommended that you just simply rip them off (which is only a moral dilemma for those that still fear internet downloads and/or listen to Pink Floyd).
The former is the case for Canada’s own Protest the Hero, however they’re one of the few straight prog bands that actually make good work of random scene chances in their quick 3-4 minute song structures. This is a feat difficult to imagine considering they deem it necessary to fit every cliché (*cough*, I meant “rule”) within every song. So to end this off - I like them. They have the virtue of brevity despite their insane use of every play within the playbook of PROG!!!!@!#$!@$!@!!%&^&!!!!!!
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Battle At Sea - Mastodon (Lifesblood. Relapse Records, 2001)
This is old…like as old as a…fuckit, I can’t think of a proper simile right now.
My educated (was the top of my class in Metal Nerdology) guess is that this footage dates back to 2000, a whimsical time when a little Georgian band named after the retarded cousin of the Woolly Mammoth (seriously, look it up) were just getting their metal feet wet.
Battle at Sea turns out to be one of my favourite songs off of the band’s debut EP and can be found on their compliation record Call of the Mastodon for those interested. But aside from the choice of song and a freakishly skinny Brent Hinds the most interesting part about this is Eric Saner (not Sanders, as some sources have mistakenly related bassist Troy to him) the band’s lead singer. He toured with the band for a series of shows throughout the months of 2000 but was quickly dropped in favour of the dual pipe-assualt of Troy and Brent, and they probably didn’t want to stretch their pitiful earnings over 5 members when they could easily do 4. Either way, seeing what they are today it’s cool to see what a band like Mastodon started out as.
This is video is damn fine enough quality that I’m within my right of showing it to the internet without looking like a crazed fan. If anything this is like the band’s baby pictures, even if it is the ones of them playing in mud…Wait a second! <—-THERE’S MY SIMILE!
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Crack The Skye - Mastodon (Crack The Skye. Reprise Records, 2009)
Though ripe with the group’s usual aura of drum fills and calculated spastic riffing, Mastodon’s Crack The Skye ultimately lacks within it that what made me fall in love with the band: the sheer brutal nature of Remission’s chugg-a-lugging rhythmic assault or even Leviathan’s venturous drum rolls. Nonetheless, Crack The Skye takes off from the top of the submit climbed in Blood Mountain and soars off into the clouds of space. Oh, and something about Russians. Evil Russians. Apparently.
Where the album looses out to its thrashier and sludgier predecessors it makes up for it in King Crimson inspired guitar work accompanied by some of the more uniquely melodic vocal parts ever arranged within the modern wave of American metal.
I like Crack The Skye, but in a different way than how I enjoy, say, Remission, which is a extremely good thing. Surprisingly few musicians are making any progress with their sound with albums, and some times those that do go about it in sporadic leaps and bounds. Mastodon have actually made a successful progression of their sound from crushing monolithic metal tunes to atmospheric prog metal epics (complete with guitar solos).
After sitting through the album in its entirety a total of 17 times, I can safely say that my favourite track is the album’s title tune. The song has guest vocals by Scott Kelly of Neurosis.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]Teeth of a Cogwheel - Baroness (The Red Album. Relapse Records. 2007)
Rules for the Modern Prog band # 023 - Gratuitously ripping off Rush is never frowned upon, if anything, it’s enforced.
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