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Mastodon - Emperor of Sand CD (album) cover

EMPEROR OF SAND

Mastodon

 

Tech/Extreme Prog Metal

3.67 | 155 ratings

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Prog-jester
Prog Reviewer
4 stars Their best (read "proggiest") since "Crack The Skye"? Rightfully so. Gone are the bangers like "Motherload" and "Curl of the Burl"... wait, they're actually not! While the opener "Sultan's Curse" is 100% 2006-2009 MASTODON, the very next one, a 3-min long "Show Yourself" is the guys at their poppiest, spreading them hooks left and right.

For "Crack The Skye" fans there are mini-epics like "Roots Remain" and "Jaguar God", for die-hard metalheads (hadn't they given up on the band like three albums ago?) there's an obligatory Scott Kelly feature on a bombastic "Scorpion Breath", and so on and so forth. Unfortunately it gets MASTODON-by-numbers on tracks 6 through 9, and those would've worked way better as a single 10-12-min long epic - though I doubt they'd be playing it live then, ha! Anyway, a nice return to form for the quartet with a near-perfect balance of good songs and proggy tricks.

Prog-jester | 4/5 |

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