Crack The Skye

Metal, except for a weird Tony Iommi fetish, is not my cup of tea. I know squat about it. I'm hardly interested in looking up bands with names like Agalloch or Mastodon, or Opeth, or Dream Theater, or Meshuggah...

But those darn music forums...

Mastodon released in March their fourth studio album, something called Crack The Skye. I thought "meh! who cares?". Then I figured I might as well look it up and myspaced them. That's when I heard a song called "The Last Baron". Gosh. A thing of beauty. As if early Back Sabbath had mated The Strawbs. It's a crappy comparison, but for a folk-prog fan who happens to like Black Sabbath, it's miraculous that such music exist. I immediately needed that album (and actually got it along Heaven & Hell's The Devil You Know)

Turns out progressive metal is awesome.

There's no point trying to review it myself, as I don't know the band or the genre. I'm not even sure what the heck they're going on about. Something about Czarist Russia and astral travels.

The critiques are there already anyway, everybody says it (except for a couple of die-hard Mastodon fans apparently who think its their worst effort): it's just awesome. Find out for yourselves if you doubt it. All the tracks are awesome. And 10:54 minutes "The Czar", with 13:01 minutes "The Last Baron" are just freaking experiments in sheer genius.

Oh, and yeah, turns out Agalloch rocks too, so they'll be one of my next venture into the world of progressive metal.