BLOOD MOUNTAIN

Before you decide to listen to Mastadon's Blood Mountain you need to ask yourself a question: how much metal sludge, thrash, and slop do you like with your prog metal? If the answer is, "a lot," then you're in for a treat. Blood Mountain delivers. If you like your metal crisp, melodic, dynamic, emotive, or thought provoking, then take heed... Blood Mountain is a noisy and violent slap to the face that will not appeal to everyone.

Mastadon knows how to kick-ass. Every second of this album feels precisely arranged to do just that. However, the band has decided that their style should hide the precision playing, time signature changes, and intense instrumental breaks behind a wall of tuned-down fuzz and crunch that just makes the album sound sloppy. Each band member sounds busy for the sake of being busy, and after several listens I was left wondering what the standout moments were.

Some people love this sound, as you can see in the high ratings for this album, but to me the few moments of genuine creativity are lost in the noise, and it literally hurts my ears to try to find them.

In a way, I guess that's actually a pretty cool compliment to pay a heavy metal album, but if I'm going to subject myself to gruff violence - like someone kicking my chair for 50 minutes - then the pay-off better be high, and Blood Mountain simply isn't interesting enough.

A heavy metal fist held high for those that want to punish themselves with Blood Mountain's bombardment of shredding riffs and indecipherable lyrics, but I'll go back to listening to the other, more interesting metal groups out there.

Songwriting: 2 - Instrumental Performances: 3 - Lyrics/Vocals: 2 - Style/Emotion/Replay: 2