Leviathan (2004)

Artist: Mastodon
Release Year: 2004

Rating: 9/10

Track Listing: 1) Blood and Thunder; 2) I Am Ahab; 3) Seabeast; 4) Island; 5) Iron Tusk; 6) Megalodon; 7) Naked Burn; 8) Aqua Dementia; 9) Hearts Alive; 10) Joseph Merrick.

We've all heard mathematical metal, sure--but how many of us know any literary metal?  And I don't just mean because this album is based on Moby-Dick.  I mean because the tracks move through different motifs that illustrate characters and motivations, even as the pulverizing style of sludge metal threatens to pound us blindly into the ground the whole time.  And the thing is, you'd think you have to look up the lyrics, but the track titles alone tell us what we need to know.

The first two tracks are instant classics, with their growling, lurching, roaring cries for murder and cosmic vengeance setting the stage perfectly.  Indeed, there are times when things threaten to go entirely off the rails into insanity.  Look at the odes to the old ways in "Island"-- or, better yet, the absolutely rabid yelping in "Aqua Dementia" that comes the closest to capturing the kind of fury a man like Ahab must feel at the cosmos.  

Conversely, there are some lighter moments, but never a breath of fully clean air.  "Seabeast" is the perfect depiction of the whale himself: an uneasy, lurching verse melody that's repeated over and over like a madman's mantra, nowhere near as urgent as the previous two tracks, but still warning of latent destruction if we get too close.  And apparently, "Naked Burn" wasn't even written as part of the story, but its emotional lamentation of "save yourself, don't wait on me" accidentally winds up a near-perfect fit for Ahab's canonical surrender to his own madness.

The one controversy I'm likely to ignite is this: I don't love "Hearts Alive" any more than the rest of these tracks.  I like it, sure, but it's not as epic-sounding as its 13.5 minute runtime would imply-- just your standard, high-quality Mastodon song with great riffs and a killer groove, but stretched out to double length-- that is, until the incredible solo kicks in at the end.  Then, when we finally close out with the acoustic-driven instrumental "Joseph Merrick" (the legal name of the Elephant Man), it's less like we've closed the book and more like we're dripping wet and shivering in the dark.

What a great album.  Of course the riffs and guitar solos are excellent, but I have to specifically praise Brann Dailor's paranoid, walls-closing-in style of drumming.  This is the album where he really became a focal point for me.  I have a harder time picking out green tracks on this album, both because everything on it is good, and because there's so much coherence that the individual songs become orphaned when removed from the context.  This is a novel, after all, and it must be experienced as a whole.