Sometime in 2009 a friend lent me a CD with a psychedelic cover and a warning that it “might take a while to grow on you”. I gave it a few spins and dismissed it, disliking the vocal style. Months later, the same band came up in conversation at work, as my Welsh coworker convinced me to give them another shot by raving on about an earlier album of theirs and how “the drums come in waves – just like the ocean”. He even called it the “best metal album of the last decade” – a lofty claim. That particular album was Leviathan and the band was Mastodon. One listen, and I was hooked.

Months later, and I found myself seeing the Progressive Sludge band from Atlanta playing one of their sideshows from the Big Day Out tour at the Palace in Melbourne. After a set of Drop A tuned Goregrind from local band The Day Everything Became Nothing (carrying on the long standing tradition of bizarrely matched opening acts for metal bands), the crowd was growing restless to see the Progressive Sludge giants take the stage.

I came into this show with a rough idea of what to expect after talking with interstate friends – the Crack the Skye album in full, followed by a selection of old songs (we ended up getting the exact same set). So for the week preceding the concert I had been listening to Crack The Skye fairly frequently to familiarise myself with the album.

Unsure of what the crowd would be like, my cohorts and I ended up dead center and halfway back in the mosh pit, putting the small female member of the group in the middle and promising to fend off anyone who got a little too punchy or gropey. This turned out to be the best whole-stage view I’d ever had at the Palace, and even our Tiny Female Friend commented that she could see everything… score!

From the first note, the album’s intricately layered guitar tones were recreated faithfully with a series of guitar changes by Brent Hinds including a see-thru Flying V and a silverburst double-necked guitar. The other guitarist, Bill Kelliher, seemed to be content using a more standard array of guitars but I also couldn’t hear him in the mix very well despite his two Marshall JCM800 half stacks roaring away onstage.

The waves of single stroke drum rolls of Brann Dailor sat in heavy contrast with the simplistic drumming of the opening act, and his playing was especially noticeable in the second set where he was free to play more complex beats to the heavier material. Double kicks made their token appearances but the real highlight of his drumming is his signature fill-heavy style, and his 6 piece Tama kit was copping an intense pounding throughout the night.

Hinds, Dailor and bassist Troy Sanders took turns at trading off vocal duties, with Dailor providing vocals for the verses of “Oblivion” and scattered backing vocals while Hinds and Sanders shared the rest of the lead vocals approximately 50/50, Kelliher finally adding some shouted backings in the second set. Vocally, I think the band was better live than on the recordings, at least for the first set – the overproduced nature of the vocals on the latest album is the main thing that I took issue with while trying to get into the album. After seeing this show, I think what I had initially underestimated about the album upon first listens was the importance of singability – at times during big choruses in “Divination“, “Quintessence” and “Crack The Skye” the crowd seemed to be singing the words louder than the band through the PA system.

As the second set went on, the band seemed to become more comfortable. The sound levels crept up and the physicality of the music improved – you could feel every kick drum hit thump hard, and every guitar chug – but intelligibility suffered, to the point where my drummer friend stated that he couldn’t follow the beat anymore or even recognise the songs. Somehow though the crowd still managed to mosh away to songs like Mother Puncher and Iron Tusk, a highlight of my evening (and as it seemed, almost everyone else’s).

The crowd’s participation was great and in fact the band broke their silence sometime during the second set to point this out, eventually taking photos of the crowd and inviting a fan up on stage to dance to the final two songs… which was made all the more amusing by the fact that we had seen her get dragged off stage by security as she climbed up an hour earlier during “The Czar“. Crazy Dancing Girl, Melbourne salutes you!

Mastodon hold pride of place as one of the only bands who I’ll trust when they tell you that the next song is the last one – for a band who speak so little throughout their sets, you kind of have to take them seriously when they do actually say something. They wrapped up their almost two hour long performance with a pummeling rendition of “March Of The Fire Ants“, during which the crowd used up the last of their energy in one final burst of furious moshing.

As my friends and I stood out the front discussing our next course of action, the crew was already loading their truck ready for the Adelaide stop on the Big Day Out tour. It seemed like it was all over too soon, and yet I didn’t walk away cursing the shortness of their sets either – the band managed to strike the perfect balance so easily missed by many bands. The aforementioned Tiny Female Friend had never heard any Mastodon before apart from snippets we had played her at band practice, and she thought that it was “really great how they started with softer stuff and worked up to the heavy songs” and I’m inclined to agree.

More importantly, I think I finally “get” Crack The Skye. Familiarity with the material definitely helped with enjoyment of the first half of the show. While the album is a challenging listen at first, seeing it performed live in its entirety helped to solidify it in my mind as one of the best heavy albums of recent years and Mastodon as one of the best live acts going around.

Setlist:

Oblivion

Divinations

Quintessence

The Czar

Ghost Of Karelia

Crack The Skye

The Last Baron

Circle Of Cysquatch

Aqua Dementia

Where Strides The Behemoth

Mother Puncher

Iron Tusk

March Of The Fire Ants