MASTODON
Madness, Sacrifice and the Unforgiving Sea
By: John Mincemoyer
"In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fished of every color, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless regions, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Wales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs."
- Montgomery's World Before The Flood.
Moby-Dick is largely considered to be the quintessential "American" novel. It is quite possibly, besides War and Peace, the greatest story every told-it is certainly the greatest sea story every written. Unlike, War and Peace, Moby-Dick reveals, in its myriad levels, man's belligerence when faced with the awe-inspiring powers of omnipresent and omnipotent nature. Mad Captain Ahab has already lost one leg to the White Whale, but his obsession for vengeance not only spells his doom, but the doom of his ship The Pequod and ultimately the doom of his crew (Chapter 41). As Ahab states:
What is it, what nameless inscrutable, unearthly thing
is it; what cozening,
hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorse-less emperor
commands me; that against all natural lovings and
longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding,
and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me
ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I
durst not so much as dare?
Ishmael, the young narrator of Moby-Dick, reveals the burning madness that resulted from Ahab's initial battle with the White Whale (Chapter 41). After having his leg "reaped away" by the "sickle-shaped lower jaw" of Moby-Dick:
The White Whale swam before him [Ahab] as the
monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies
which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are
left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That
intangible malignity which has been from the beginning;
to whose dominion even the modern Christians
ascribe one-half of the worlds...
GENESIS
Mastodon's sophomore effort, Leviathan, according to bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders was, "Basically inspired three trips ago to Europe. Brann [Dailor] was coming straight off of his honeymoon in Hawaii. We flew to Europe without him. So he flew from Hawaii to San Francisco, from San Francisco to Dallas, from Dallas to Atlanta, from Atlanta to Baltimore, from Baltimore to Reykjavik, Iceland and from Reykjavik to London. So he spent something like 39 hours in planes and two days in airports.
During that time he had picked up Moby-Dick and he had two solid days and 39 flight hours to pore through it. When he finally met up with us in London he had this idea that everything referenced in Moby-Dick was very similar and symbolic of what the four of us were doing in our van for the past four years. He explained to us the similarities that he saw between the book and us and he told us that there was so much that the band could pull from this. So, we put this in our pipe and smoked it as they say, and by the time we got home for the two months to write the record-it had been two, almost three, years since Remission-we started pulling on those ideas and everything from the wonders of the deep to prehistoric, gigantic creatures and tying that in with everything that we do as far as perseverance, dedication and sacrifice as a band."
Conceptually, 'Leviathan' hits the mark. It is interesting that a young band, on their second album, would do something as bold as a full-blown "concept" album.
"We just started writing lyrics and it all tied in," states Troy. "By the time we got into the studio to start recording the album it just came very easily. We didn't shake on it and agree that we're going to do the record around this concept when it came time to write the album, that wasn't the case. It was just kind of a great idea presented by Brann that we dissected that ultimately led to us creating nine of the album's 10 songs from this idea. We, as a band, are whalers in a sense that we'll go out for four months at a time sacrificing your family, your health and possibly your life because you have this burn in your belly that you have to achieve this goal. Sometimes I don't know if we're crazy for doing this or if we're cool for doing this...or if it's a slight piece of both.
Also, our friend Neil Fallon from Clutch gave me a book, the title escapes me...It was what Melville had pulled the idea for Moby-Dick from...The story of the whale ship Essex. I had read that and that gave me a lot of insight into the dedication of being a whaler, and being 19 or 25 years old and going out to sea for this mission that could take three weeks, three months or even three years, which what we've been doing for the past four years. Thus, with our travels and our fascination with gigantic creatures everything tied together quite nicely."
A LOVE OF CREATURES LARGE AND SMALL, ESPECIALLY LARGE ONES
Mastodon has a thing for creatures.
"All four of us are fascinated with the magnificence of Mammoths and enormous creatures, both myth and fact," states Troy. "We go to museums just to look at full skeletons of Mammoths and Mastodons. The magnificence is amazing and the same thing with the whale. And these are animals of truth that existed and still do. The magnificence of the whales is awe-inspiring. The gnarliness [sic] of a shark is over-whelming. Tying that magnificence of reality in with the awe associated with myth and legend speaks to all of us. We know that the Loch Ness Monster is a myth, but we wrote "Ol'e Nessie" in her honor. We want to dip our hands in the Loch and hope that she appears. The myth of the Figi Mermaid is where the entire lyrics for "Megalodon" came from.²
Myth or legend, Nymph tale washed ashore,
Near the Kraken sleepeth stirs coral and bone,
Infinite city, No sexy sneer, Hideous creation,
Human and animal,
Banter songs of rudeness to be adhered,
Not on rocks that glisten, Harps to listen, Comb hair,
Tear right to pieces, Left to recess a watery grave,
Sensing the blood of prey, Swimming in fear for life,
Rolling over, Falling into jaws, Teeth that chatter,
It distracts them all, The Fiji Mermaid,
She will let it know, Time is coming to feed and gnaw
"It's the exact opposite of the beautiful mermaids sitting on glistening rocks, combing their hair," says Troy. "This isn't the case...these are the wickedly horrible, gnarly-faced Figi Mermaids that chattered their teeth beyond your boat until you looked over the side and they drag you under and eat you. They're supposedly made of coral and bone.... Stories like that, we find amazing.
We were destined to have a song called "Megalodon." We visited the Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum in St. Augustine, Florida where they have a Megalodon jaw. I stood in the jaw. I'm 6'4" and the jaw still wasn't touching my head. This is a creature that existed with a mouth opening up bigger than six-and-a-half feet and it was like ten feet wide. Just the jaws and teeth of this creature were beyond...I couldn't imagine seeing a creature of that size today. The Megalodon is the extinct cousin of the Great White Shark, which of course still exists. Just seeing that mouth...we right then and there voted on having a song called "Megalodon."
Seven tracks on Leviathan deal in some form or fashion with the Leviathan and/or mysteries of the deep. The three major exceptions are "Ísland," inspired in part by Norse myth, which revisits, in succinct, yet profound lines, the volcanic eruption that took residents of Heimay, Iceland by complete surprise in 1973:
...Praise our Pagan Father, Founder of the Althing,
Given decision to live, Not taken,
The flight towards the light, I'll stay in the lava for life,
Erupting when gods take us all,
Changing the peaks makes us pour,
From the mountain and burn, The path of our time,
Ruler of Sky's thunder...Beware the hammer of Thor,
Lava goddess, Ice and fire, Settling down, Ocean geysir,
Gullfoss, Heimay '73...
With the album's emphasis on the greatest creature of nature, the inclusion of such a track detailing a cataclysmic event at the hands of the mythical Aesir or a vengeful Mother Nature fits well with the underlying theme of Moby-Dick and the uncontrollable forces of nature.
"Aqua Dementia," acts as a portent concerning mankind's abuse of the oceans:
...It's hard to stand around and watch while
they ignore us,
She is dumped on, Used as an ashtray,
At the expense of an organized association,
I see the stones in the path we laid,
It's a question of tomorrow,
We like to breathe in the ancient wind that we
have followed...
The final track, the haunting and beautiful instrumental, "Joseph Merrick," deals with another "creature" altogether.
Troy says, "We loved the way "Elephant Man," the last track on 'Remission,' turned out. It was kind of a peaceful, serene piece of music that capped off a crazy and chaotic album. Brent had this acoustic song and we wanted to called it "Elephant Man: Part II" because we're fascinated with the Elephant Man and his existence, but we decided instead to call it "Joseph Merrick," which is a tribute and dedication to him for what he went through and stood for basically...The fine line between creature and man and beauty and beast."
RECORDING THE BEAST
As chaotic and brutal as 'Remission' sounds, 'Leviathan' is an altogether different animal. The crystal-clear and bright production differs greatly from the darker production featured on 'Remission.' Several factors accounted for this change.
Troy says, "When we were in Atlanta recording 'Remission' there were two things that we weren't quite comfortable with. Number one, when we were home we didn't even think about not working because we need to be working for those two weeks-we couldn't afford to take two weeks off while Matt [Bayles] flew in to record the album-so we would work all day long, and record all night long, so we were grumpy and cranky and whiny little bitches, which didn't create the camaraderie that you're supposed to have in the studio. The second point was that Matt recorded the album on three different studios in Atlanta. All of which, he had to deal with different recording machines, different recording techniques, tape machines, different consoles and he would have been more comfortable at his home studio where he works all of the time-Litho Studios. So, he did a great job on 'Remission,' but he wasn't as comfortable as he could have been. Those were the two main factors that we decided to get the hell out of town to record it like many other bands had been able to do that we read about. Plus we were finally at a position where we could go live somewhere else for several weeks without working and be okay financially to record. This made more sense to us, so we booked a tour out to Seattle and lived in a Motel 6 for three weeks."
For all of the work and sacrifice, the band is happy with 'Leviathan.'
"100 percent happy," states Troy. "Last night after our show we sat in our van and listened to it three times in a row. I mean we've heard the album a hundred times before, but we actually finally got to listen to the finished product uninterrupted for two and a half hours. We're extremely happy.
Musically, it came together quite nicely. We had been on the road for eight or nine months throughout 2003 and we had to take two months off to write and record it as I said earlier...We didn't want it to come out three and a half years after 'Remission,' so we had to get going with it. We got home in either October or November, and after touring for that long, we kind of wanted to take a month off and let everyone go their separate ways on vacation, but in actuality we had to get into the studio and knock the album out. Bill, Brann and Brent came up with just these beautiful and eclectic pieces of music and we didn't feel rushed or hurried, but we knew that time was of the essence. They kind of did it with relative ease, musically. I couldn't be more happy and proud with what they created."
Concerning the terse, yet amazing lyrics, Troy reveals, "Lyrically, I didn't feel rushed or pressured either, but I never want to settle on lyrics unless I truly feel it or believe it because we're going to take that song on the road and play it and we're going to play that song 300 times and I want to mean it every time, every night. I don't think it was difficult, it just had to come naturally, but I didn't write all of the lyrics straight away. Actually, for some of the songs I didn't write the lyrics until we were recording the songs in the studio in March. So, some of it boiled down to the last minute, but I wanted to make sure that the band was happy with every word."
TALES OF THE DEEP AND OTHER SCUTTLEBUTT
Troy's use of "every word" is interesting considering that the predominant amount of Mastodon songs feature lyrics that are "stripped of the fat." What I mean by this is that they express, or tell, a lot with less. There are many beautiful phrases on 'Leviathan,' but one lyrical line that interested me is found in "Aqua Dementia," which reads:
...The righteous go in blazing fury
And we cleanse the Earth to bring it down
Bring it down
And God will watch it burn
Releasing souls...
Moby-Dick, largely misunderstood upon publication in 1851, was considered by many to be quite blasphemous. There are many allusions to God and the heavens, as well as pagan gods throughout it pages, but the line referring to God in "Aqua Dementia" is interesting in that Mastodon have touched upon powerful, seeming omnipotent beasts, but not one omnipotent being.
Troy reveals, "That lyric actually is one that Scott Kelly from Neurosis wrote. He split "Aqua Dementia" both lyrically and vocally with Brent. I cannot truly say where that lyric derived from, but live when we do the song, I sing Scott's parts, so deep down in my belly I have to make it personal, so I belt it out with as much meaning as I can muster."
It may be telling that that line by Scott Kelly mirrors the madness evidenced in Ahab (Chapter 36):
Take of thine eye! More intolerable
Than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare!
So, so; thou reddenest and palest;
My heat has melted thee to anger-glow...
The Pagan leopards-the unrecking and
Unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give
No reasons for the torrid life they feel!
The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all
With Ahab, in this matter of the whale?
According to Troy, "We try to use lyrics as a fifth instrument instead of having vocals all over the place or having a vocalist that would put more vocals all over the place that might not be necessary. So, stripping it of the fat as you said, that's a great way to put it, I've never heard of it or thought of it like that, but just they few words that are hear and there are there because they add to the music."
The concept of using lyrics, as another instrument is none more prevalent that in the album's opening track "Blood and Thunder":
...Split your lungs with blood and thunder,
When you see the White Whale,
Break your backs and crack your oars men,
If you wish to prevail...
These lines send shivers down the spine of anyone who has immersed themselves within the rich, lively pages of Moby-Dick. In a few lines, Mastodon brings the furious chase of the whale into vivid, striking life. You call feel the men's muscles screaming as they strain to pull the boat through the chaotic water. Furthermore, the riff propels the song much like a boat through the waves - you drink in the bow splash, you taste the salty spray and feel the wind rushing through your hair.
THE MUSICAL MAELSTROM
Mastodon's ability, on all levels, is reaping the band no small amount of critical acclaim. Their musical prowess has been compared to early Metallica and Rush. The British metal magazine Kerrang! referred to them as "the future of metal" and Rolling Stone simply called them "devastating."
Troy, ever humble, states, "We accept these words with a whole-hearted thank you. Basically, that boils down to being an overwhelming and amazing compliment. We're glad that people see it that way and appreciate what we're trying to accomplish."
In a few short years, Mastodon has accomplished quite a bit. Right now Mastodon has no peer. This is part-and-parcel with their hunger to succeed and their backgrounds in music.
Troy states, "Brent [Hinds - guitarist] and I had been playing together for seven years and Bill and Brann had be playing together for seven or eight years. They were familiar with our band at the time and we were familiar with them so when Bill and Brann moved to Atlanta we met them immediately. We didn't put anything between us. It was an immediate friendship or rather marriage. After one practice, with no songs, we were deciding on what to call our band. We were that sure of it. That's why after we had written four songs I booked a seven-day, D.I.Y. tour around the Southeast. We didn't have but four songs! That just shows the overall desire and drive that the four of had to bring the music to the people. Those were little signs that this could work and we could go on to the next level. We didn't put any ideas aside at all."
Considering the amazing musicians grouped around him, Troy states, "I think it's fascinating and I cannot...I give all of them my thanks and gratitude after every show and practice. I personally feel grateful to be in a band with them and I do not take it for granted at all. I think we all, as a whole, collectively feel fortunate to play with each other."
THE BURN IN THE BELLY AND THE MADNESS IN THE EYE
Forget their fascination with creatures and beasts. If it is one think you take from this-it is Mastodon's desire to succeed. Much like Ahab's quest for Moby-Dick the band, modern, crusty whalers themselves, are driven.
"Yes, we feel driven. We have since the get-go," states Troy. "We all want to take this to the next level and we still have the fire burning in our bellies. That drive has gotten us through the last 400 shows that took place in over 18 countries. You cannot put up with that much sacrifice unless you are obsessed with following this dream for better or worse. It's much like a marriage and the vows you take when you make that commitment."
One thing that I have noticed is that Mastodon's dynamic ability seems lost on many. Listening to 'Leviathan' or witnessing the band live gives the listener a lot to absorb quickly. If you concentrate on Brann's drum wizardry you might miss the subtle beauty of Brent and Bill's riffs. Add Troy's bass, the nuances of the vocals and the tales they weave...it is almost overwhelming.
Troy and the band understand this. He says, "You show up. You give it your best. You play with 100 percent sincerity and that's all you can do. We always refer to it as the 'Neurosis effect.' What I mean by that is, I've seen Neurosis a million times, but in 90-something when they got the opening slot for Pantera, half the people there didn't give a shit, didn't understand, just went right over their heads...The other half that were absorbed in it and interested it, those 500 people, at this particular show I saw, were staring, slack-jawed. Not clapping, not screaming, doing nothing. And that's a good thing. We get that all the time. I am not comparing what we do to Neurosis, but on our current tour opening up for Fear Factory, the Fear Factory fans in front are actually yawning... I'm not kidding. We've got photos of this. They're there early, they have to sit through the opening bands and they're bored. We know this. We just do our thing."
FROM DREAMS TO REALITY: PAUL ROMANO'S ROLE
The importance of visual presentation is not lost to the band either. Paul Romano, almost the "silent" fifth member of Mastodon, who painted the stunning cover on 'Remission,' also painted the breathtaking cover to 'Leviathan.'
According to Troy, "Not only is he [Paul] an amazing person and an unbelievably kind friend, but his artwork is astonishing to us. We give him all the faith and trust in the world with anything that he touches artistically relating to Mastodon. When we did our Thin Lizzy split picture disc we gave him the word that the artwork needed to be turned in and he came up with something quickly and we had 100 percent trust and faith in anything that he was going to do...I didn't even see the artwork until the finished product came back, so that's the kind of trust we have with him. I cannot even think of good enough words to say about him and his art. And we take the artwork seriously because it's a big factor with a piece of packaged music. We see a lot of CDs that could be more striking in our opinion. We've always strived to have something representative of our ideas. With the first one we wanted mountains and whirlpools and huge, natural devastating forces of Mother Nature. With 'Remission' we had more time to capture the idea and put them on paper. The same goes for 'Leviathan.' The actual painting that is nailed to Paul's wall is so amazing. When we visited Philadelphia we went to his place to see it. We all had to touch it-it is so
beautiful."
ELEMENTALS AND PORTENTS
I like the fact that Mastodon operates on multiple levels: musically, lyrically and visually. One aspect of the band that I find interesting is the understated elemental aspect. The fire element was brought out on the cover of 'Remission' with the burning white horse. The fire design also became a logo, or rather a talisman, for the band. Now with 'Leviathan,' the second element of water comes into play. Their talisman has changed to that of a stylized wave. The remaining two elements are air and earth. So what will the band do next?
"Good question," replies Troy. "I cannot imagine what's coming next. I've thought about it and I'm stumped."
But he adds, "I'm excited to get working on new songs for the new album although we're booked solid through the end of the year and probably will not have the opportunity to write any new songs. Right now, at the moment, I'm exhausted of lyrical content, and I cannot imagine what will happen..."
MASTODON's website: www.mastodonrocks.com
|
|
|