Imagine this:

You are a scientist at the forefront of research dedicated to the study of quantum physics.  During a rather ambitious experiment at the newly constructed Hadron Collider, you and your team of physicists are transported back to the Triassic Period where you, using your modern knowledge, lead a war against the forces of evil on the backs of Pterosaurs and Placodonts!

Now, imagine this story set to a killer rock soundtrack.  It might sound something like this:

This is the power of Mastodon, an Atlanta, Georgia foursome with a knack for brutal and dirty progressive metal that provides an agreeing “ambience” for the group’s tales of super-beasts and psychedelia.  Labeled “stoner rock” by some, Mastodon is anything but. Their penchant for “epic” has taken this once-again withered genre to new and ever-expanding heights.

Their tale begins in 1999.  Future percussionist Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher rode forth on horseless carriage from the northern lands of New York to the southern wastes near Atlanta.  Here, the duo would win the favor of vocalist/bassist Troy Sanders and guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds at a merriment gathering in Hinds’s basement, while he and a large congregation were being soothed by the live sounds of High on Fire.  Over many a fermented drink, the minstrels took note of each other’s musical prowess and, during the next few weeks, brought together their expertise to arrange a set of commanding compositions.

In 2000, with demo in hand, Mastodon, with original vocalist Eric Saner, jumped into touring mode, supporting and gaining respect from larger bands like Queens of the Stone Age, Morbid Angel, and Cannibal Corpse.

Brann recalls during an interview “…being cramped up in a van for 50 hours, driving across country, sleeping on piss-stained carpets, and eating baloney sandwiches…and it’s all been worth it.”  “We didn’t know if we were being dedicated and trying to go for this dream,” muses bassist Troy Sanders, “or if we were just complete idiots.  I guess it was a little bit of both.”

It also wasn’t long after their first forays into the life of a hard-touring, hard-rocking act that Eric, Troy, Brent, Bill, and Brann caught the eye of Relapse Records who holds such acts as The Dillinger Escape Plan, Soilent Green, Necrophagist, and Origin under their umbrella.

After the departure of Saner, Troy and Brent took up vocal duties, and Mastodon signed with Relapse.  They were then thrown into the studio to record what would come to be known as Lifesblood, a five-song demonstrative effort of their ability to be brutal and experimental while remaining catchy.  The EP successfully captured a large portion of the unbridled force that goes into their live sets and laid down in a 15-minute journey — songs which would blast through thousands of stereo speakers across the country and solidify Mastodon as a new and upcoming force in the world of heavy metal.

After some touring in support of Lifesblood, Relapse decided the group was ready to head back to the studio to record their full-length debut.  They settled into Man Or Astroman’s Zero Return studios in Atlanta, Georgia, where they began to spin music around the concept of fire, inadvertently starting a process that would set the tone for all future efforts: The Concept Album.

The theme and cover art for the album arose from a dream Brann had after the death of his sister at the age of 15.  Dailor says, “Whenever I have dreams of her, they stick with me. But this one time, I woke up and was like, ‘Holy shit — that horse, its eyes — they were staring at me. A nuclear missile went up in the air, came down, it’s on fire…they’re all on fire.’”  Thus, the flame element would play as the main motivating factor for the concepts behind the songs on the album, and the cover would come to depict a horse burning in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.

After its May 2002 release, Remission would be very well received by the media, and while it didn’t yet propel Mastodon into the limelight like later efforts, it did cause the normally scathing Pitchfork Media to give the album a 9 out of 10 and proclaim that the group would have “heavy-metal lovers everywhere shitting themselves naked.”

The next year would see Mastodon touring relentlessly in support of Remission, playing to larger audiences along with label-mates High on Fire, whose gig in Hinds’s basement in ‘99 served as the origin point for the band in the beginning.  They would also tour in support of metal titans Hatebreed, Clutch, and The Dillinger Escape Plan along the east coast, and go on to finish out 2002 with a string of dates in Japan.

Things are heating up:

Normally, the touring required after an album would have been sated by the schedule that Mastodon had maintained in 2002, but Remission had sent such violent shockwaves through the heavy metal community that the band had no choice but to continue support for the CD and take their live set to almost every venue conceivable.  Tours with Cephalic Carnage, Dysrhythmia, Uphill Battle, and more dates with Clutch brought them to audiences all over the United States and had the name itself, “Mastodon,” being spoken on the lips of metalheads from Spokane to New York City.

Spending so much time on the road would normally have your average group pulling their hair out in an exhaustive fury, but for Mastodon, it was all in a day’s work.  The time which perhaps should have been spent recuperating prior to returning to the studio was instead spent on a publicity blitz, seeing the band filming a music video for the single “March of the Fire Ants” and submitting to interview after interview, making “bands to watch” lists from Alternative Press to Metal Hammer to Rolling Stone, and even landing a spot on Revolver’s “25 Best Live Acts Ever” list.

However, the time had once again come for Mastodon to enter the recording studio to record their full-length, sophomore follow-up to 2002’s Remission.  With Matt Bayles (Isis, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam) at production’s helm, the band traveled to Seattle to begin laying down tracks for an album that would come to define the career of this already prolific act.

Once again, the group would venture into the realm of the conceptual to bring the songs on their album turning around a central theme.  For the second time, percussionist Brann Dailor would provide the fulcrum on which the music would balance.  “I was flying to London at the time to meet my band mates and…over the course of the flight, I was reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and some things began to jump out at me.  Like, by the second page, they had referred to the whale as the ‘sea-salt mastodon’ and, apart from that, I thought there were some parallels between Ahab’s obsession and our own obsession as a band with our goals and dreams for success.”

Released in August of 2004, Leviathan, based on the aforementioned work by Melville, raised Mastodon to near prolific status, bringing them praise from almost every corner of the music press.  It was a proverbial punch in the stomach to the industry, which, after the stain of nu-metal had sunk so deep into the fabric of popular culture, had nearly written off metal as dead.  Not only did Leviathan catapult this once relatively unknown group of geeks to the level of metal gods, it almost single-handedly ushered in a new era of heavy metal recognition, paving the way for the emergence of what would come to be known as the New Wave of American Heavy Metal that included bands like Lamb of God, Atreyu, Trivium, and Killswitch Engage.

Immediately following the album’s release, Mastodon embarked on their biggest jaunt yet, with Slipknot and thrash metal forefathers Slayer for the Unholy Alliance tour.  Reminiscing on the outing, Brann says, “It was incredible.  It was amazing.  It was 10-20,000 people every night.  And the food was great.  I actually gained weight on this tour, as opposed to losing it.”  Furthering the agenda with their thrash progenitors, the guys would see another European tour with Slayer, this time featuring metal contemporaries Killswitch Engage.

With Leviathan rocketing onward, the press awards began flowing in.  It won album of the year in rock publications Revolver, Kerrang, and Terrorizer, and would have Mastodon leaving to tour again, this time headlining in the UK, then returning to the States for another swath of headlining shows.  While on tour, the group released a remastered version of their first demo titled The Call of the Mastodon and a DVD of interviews and footage from the band’s early days as a five-piece.

More opportunities, it would seem, always go hand-in-hand with massive recognition, as the virtual world would come calling to Mastodon.  The racing video games Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Project Gotham Racing 3, along with action adventure platform Saints Row took advantage of the group’s licensing of Leviathan opening track “Blood and Thunder,” subsequently featuring the title during gameplay.

At this point, it was obvious to anyone watching that Mastodon could not be stopped, but they were far from finished.  After a short break, the foursome inked their first major label deal with Warner Bros. and set off to record an album that would come to be known as Blood Mountain, this time representing the element of Earth, as bassist Troy Sanders would state: “Two albums ago, our Remission record was loosely based on fire, and our Leviathan album was based around the ocean and the water. So this time we decided to focus on earth. And we chose ‘mountain,’ which can embody every single element of earth. And it’s a themed record of a journey and a struggle and an idea and travels through various elements within earth, and everything that comes along the way. And ultimately, our goal is to prevail and conquer this giant massive slab of mother Earth which is ‘Blood Mountain’.”

September 11, 2006 marked the release of Blood Mountain, furthering the band’s penetration into popularity and garnering Mastodon their first Grammy nod in Best Metal Performance for the single “Colony of Birchmen,” featuring fellow “stoner metal” crooner Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age fame.  Other guest vocalists on the album included Scott Kelly of Neurosis (whose influence on the group cannot be overstated) and psychedelic space rock singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala from The Mars Volta.

Thirteen months of touring would follow Blood Mountain’s release, which the band promised itself to be the veritable IT, in terms of live support for the album.  However, Queens of the Stone Age would come calling to Mastodon for support of one of their tours, then The Foo Fighters would come calling for the group to support them on one of theirs.  Knowing that would be the end of it, the group stated that it would take a band like Neurosis contacting them to do a set of dates at the Brooklyn, New York Masonic Temple to get them out of a rest period…which is exactly what happened in January of 2008.

Luckily, though, the band was reportedly able to catch a break for a couple weeks…before jumping into the studio again to record their fourth full-length album, the second under the Warner Bros. records family.  Details about this forthcoming effort are hard to come by, but from all accounts, the concept this time around will involve czarist Russia, and the album is set, possibly, for a January 2009 release.

I guess the end of all this begs the question: Where do we go from here?  I’ll tell you one thing: over the course of researching for this piece, I have become a die-hard fan of Mastodon.  I think this band is going to save heavy metal from the clutches of the nu-metal bands who wrested this once-proud genre from the pinnacles of talent and drug it into a pit of unrespectable garbage.  Troy, Brent, Brann, and Bill are four maestros of virtually unmatched talent with the capability to fashion albums that stretch the imagination to its limits but don’t alienate those dumb fucking iron skulls who haunt the isles of record stores searching aimlessly for anything heavy.

Fear not, nerdly ones, and fear not my brutal brethren.  Mastodon is here to save the day.

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