BLOOD MOUNTAIN

More progression and experimentalism, just lacking some punch, the final punch specifically.

This album was a very nice follow-up to 'Leviathan' that really stirred up a storm in the metal community. 'Blood Mountain' has a lot more variation, like the dueling instrumental acoustic guitars section in the beginning of 'Sleeping Giant' to the complete avant-garde John Zorn like track 'Bladecatcher' and the voice box on 'Circle of Cysquatch'.it's all over the place!

Mastodon certainly did not lose their brutal signature sound of course. Brann Dailor's furious dynamic drum solo opens up the album before some crunchy guitar and Troy's angry vocals come in right along with them. The clean vocal work is used much more then on 'Leviathan'.

Now, the only flaw are some of the songs themselves. If tracks 1-8 were the only tracks on this album, it would be one of the best metal albums of all time. It was quite sad that after 'Hunters of the Sky' the album lacked good song structure. Tracks 9-12 just sounded like an amateur Mastodon wannabee band. The most useless would be the last track 'Pendulous Skin'. 'Pendulous Skin' is a 22 minute piece consisting of 5 minute Mastodon blues which just sounds bad in words, the music would share the same fate. The album would only lose one star in my view for having a horrid four track run to close out the album. Otherwise, this album was quite excellent.

I recommend this to any fan of prog-metal. It is surely one of the better releases in the genre. Others with a bit of a more eclectic taste can try out this album as well. It does not disappoint!

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