CRACK THE SKYE

In a concerted effort to not get to the end of 2009 and realize I have 2538973 new albums that I haven't written reviews on, and then beating my head against a wall or with some blunt object, I have decided to force myself to start cranking out more reviews for albums of this year. And one of the good ones to do is one of the first albums I was looking forward to: Mastodon's Crack the Skye.

Before this album was released, I thought that Mastodon was a relatively good modern progressive metal band, but not one I felt was really that high-caliber. I enjoyed Leviathan some, and Blood Mountain was okay (I thought their debut was horrid though), but I couldn't really understand their high praise in both progressive and metal circles. However, with an album such as Crack the Skye, I believe Mastodon has decided what course their music is going to chart. And it's quite honestly one that I'm looking forward to. The biggest difference with this album in comparison to their first three is the amount of clean singing and overall melodicism that is a much more prominent aspect of their music. Brann Dailor has also decided to restrain himself for this release. While he is a drumming madman on all other Mastodon material before this, albeit in a good way, on here he sounds in control. It is almost as if he is examining a new way to drum on this album. Or maybe it just fits the music better. Regardless, this is an album that continues to defy categorization for me. It's kind of progressive, kind of metal ala Ozzy Osbourne crossed with Neurosis, and kind of hard rock. For those who don't really care for extreme metal, this is one of the few albums in the genre I could highly recommend to most.

While 2009 has managed to produce lots of good music in my opinion, this one is close to the top of the game. It might be there already, but only time will tell. 4 stars for now, but with time this might improve to 5.