Pages tagged “mastodon”

This Tuesday, Nov. 18, Mastodon fans will be able to wrap their giant tusks around a vinyl box set of the Atlanta band's entire discography. Hitting stores via Relapse Records, the collector's edition will be limited to a one-time, 1,000-copy pressing, complete with nine 180-gram LPs spanning the group's entire career, including the final vinyl pressing of the band's debut EP, Lifesblood, as well as covers of songs by the Melvins, Thin Lizzy and Metallica. Bonus swag includes an embroidered logo patch and a custom Mastodon turntable mat.

Atlanta-based metal quartet Mastodon has revealed that the title of its anticipated fourth album will be Crack the Skye. Reprise will release the seven-track, 50-minute record in early 2009. The song sequence is built around a four-movement centerpiece, entitled "The Czar," which delves into the album's overall theme of Czarist Russia.

In a recent interview with Paste, Brann Dailor, drummer for Atlanta-based metal-men Mastodon, offered up a few tidbits about the band's upcoming album, which he described as having "a lot more groove" than 2006's Grammy-nominated Blood Mountain.

Brann Dailor and his Mastodon brethren have had their tatooted arms full lately: After playing the main stage of this summer's biggest heavy-metal tour, the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Fest, work culminated on the band's fourth full-length album. Set to drop in January 2009, the as-yet untitled LP will likely follow the band's modern prog-metal classics, 2004's Leviathan and 2006's Grammy-nominated Blood Mountain, as one of the year's most anticipated hard rock releases.

Paste recently discussed the new album's progress with Dailor, Mastodon's unleashed-octopus of a drummer, who remained fairly tight-lipped but offered a few hints as to the direction of the new material.

I grew up in Winnipeg. It's a dirty, struggling town on the eastern edge of the Canadian prairies and we have a winter that often spans eight months of the year. Four hours north of Fargo and effectively in the middle of nowhere, it's not the easiest town for a touring band to visit. But as a kid, I still managed to see some great shows. NOFX and Face to Face came through a few times when i was around 14, and I remember chipping my elbow after a front flip off the stage went wrong at a Green Day show that same year. Strung Out, Lagwagon, Satanic Surfers, Millencolin, 88 Fingers Louie, Hi-Standard, and tons of other bands from that era all came through at one time or another, and it was always great, but the local bands were always at the heart of what we were doing. Luckily, we had some great bands. Propagandhi, I-Spy, Mung, Malefaction, to name a few, were the staple of our small punk-rock community. These were the bands that inspired my friends and I to start our first bands, and I still listen to them today.

A minor blues progression organ-vamps as the handheld camera zooms shakily into the devious grin of a young dude holding a dual-blaze firework lackadaisically, as if the object weren’t emitting a furious spark geyser next to his face.

This moment from a Black Lips concert in the group’s Georgia hometown kicks off the newly-released trailer for We Fun: Atlanta, GA Inside Out, a rock doc by Nashville filmmakers Chris Dortch and Matthew Robison (Silver Jew) and producer Bill Cody, who lent his talents to the musical time capsule Athens, GA: Inside/Out (released in 1987).

The barrage of crowdsurfing, crotch fireballs, spirit-chugging and Whirlyball hints at what Dortch meant when he told Paste, “in my mind, we’ve got like 90 Anton [Newcombe]s floating around here [in Atlanta]. And there’s this legitimate love and camaraderie between them that you don’t find in other cities.” Among the merry bands of eccentrics in the film are Deerhunter, Mastodon, the Selmanaires, Anna Kramer and the Coathangers.

Official WE FUN Trailer

On their MySpace, the filmmakers note, “Jared [Black Lips]: I personally think you come off pretty cool in yr spoken segments, so don’t have yr thugs get all pistol-whippy on me.”

Estimated release month is August.

Related links:
Paste: Chris Dortch talks ATL music documentary, We Fun
Creative Loafing: Atlanta rock doc trailer released
We Fun on MySpace

Got news for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.

While Powerthirst promises many things, including "menergy," "rawberry" made with "real lightening" (sic), and the power to make your babies run "abnormally fast," it somehow doesn't promise mayhem. Enter Rockstar. Not only does the energy drink brand have an official URL that was seemingly inpsired by a 14-year-old boy's chat room handle, but it is also the proud/titular sponsor of the Rockstar Energy Mayhem touring festival.

Like many traveling fests of this particular ilk, Rockstar Energy Mayhem will include plenty of non-music activities such as autograph signings and video games, as well as other interactive activities and "great surprises" that Rockstar promises on the festival webpage.

Oh, and bands. The line-up includes several heavy groups, such as Disturbed, Slipknot, Sevendust and Five Finger Death Punch, but we'd like to point your attention toward Mastodon. The band is still working its deservedly workable 2006 tour-de-rock, Blood Mountain, with the distinct possibility of a new record this year. So, even if you can't handle all the other, erm, mayhem, at the shows below, it might be worth your time to catch Mastodon.

But we also must beg the question: How many amphitheaters (amphitheatres?) does one cellular phone provider really need?

The answer is "a lot," apparently:

July
9 - Seattle, Wash. @ White River Amphitheatre
11 - Sacramento, Calif. @ Sleep Train Amphitheatre
12 - San Francisco, Calif. @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
13 - Irvine, Calif. @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
15 - Fresno, Calif. @ Selland Arena
16 - San Diego, Calif. @ Coors Amphitheatre
18 - Phoenix, Ariz. @ Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre
19 - Albuquerque, N.M. @ Journal Pavilion
20 - Denver, Colo. @ Coors Amphitheatre
22 - Kansas City, Mo. @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
23 - St. Louis, Mo. @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
25 - Dallas, Texas @ Smirnoff Music Centre
26 - San Antonio, Texas @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
27 - Houston, Texas @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
29 - Tampa, Fla. @ Ford Amphitheatre
30 - Miami, Fla. @ Sound Advice Amphitheater

August
1 - Atlanta, Ga. @ HiFi Buys Amphitheatre
2 - Indianapolis, Ind. @ Verizon Wireless Music Center
3 - Buffalo, N.Y. @ Darien Lake Performing Arts Center
4 - TBA
6 - Clarkston, Mich. @ DTE Energy Music Theatre
8 - Toronto, Ontario @ Molson Amphitheatre
9 - Pittsburgh, Pa. @ Post-Gazette Pavilion
10 - Chicago, Ill. @ First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre
12 - TBA
13 - Boston, Mass. @ Tweeter Center for the Performing Arts
15 - Camden, N.J. @ Tweeter Center at the Waterfront
16 - Washington, D.C. @ Nissan Pavilion
17 - Hartford, Conn. @ New England Dodge Music Center
20 - Saratoga, N.Y. @ Saratoga Performing Art Center
21 - Holmdel, N.J. @ PNC Bank Arts Center

Related links:
Paste review: Mastodon - Blood Mountain
Paste: Riffs Under Radar
MayhemFest.com

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.

[Above: Cole Alexander and Jared Swilley of Black Lips]

More documentaries should open this way. Jared Swilley, the immaculately mustached bassist/vocalist of Black Lips, reclines in a small bed, beer in hand. Snuggled beside him, his head obscured by a messy pink wig, lies BBQ of the King Khan & BBQ Show. Sprawled out atop the both of them is King Khan himself. Sitting offscreen, Atlanta performer Jessica Juggs is leading a conversation about tea tree oil.

Suddenly, Swilley sits up, inspired.

"Can this be the beginning?" he asks, looking directly into the camera and still cradling his can of beer. "Hello everybody, welcome to Atlanta, where the players play, and the non-players lose."

Everyone laughs.

"You're such a motherfucker," comes Juggs’ voice from off-camera.

These, then, are the stars of We Fun, director Chris Dortch II's upcoming documentary on Atlanta's underground music scene: the non-players. We're talking about scrappy gangs of would-be rock heroes, from nationally-hyped acts like Swilley's Black Lips, Deerhunter and Mastodon to local favorites The Selmanaires, Anna Kramer and The Coathangers.

Dortch’s film focuses on the communal aspects of Atlanta’s rock circuit, in a fashion similar to Tony Gayton’s 1987 documentary Athens, Ga.: Inside/Out. But in comparison to Athens’ arty, college-town vibe, wily, urban Atlanta is a good stand-in for Sparta.

“People keep bringing up Dig! to me and what a character Anton Newcombe of the Jonestown Massacre is,” Dortch said in a phone interview with Paste. “But in my mind, we’ve got like 90 Antons floating around here [in Atlanta]. And there’s this legitimate love and camaraderie between them that you don’t find in other cities. Like Nashville. I’m a Nashville-based filmmaker, and Nashville doesn’t have anything like that.”

Aiding Dortch are producers Matt Robison (behind the cleanly titled Silver Jews documentary Silver Jew) and Bill Cody, the man who produced Inside/Out twenty years ago. The three filmmakers came together at this past year’s SXSW Festival, which, for all of its excess, is great for creative networking. They connected over their mutual music and movie crushes, and that was that. When Dortch got the idea to document the ATL music landscape, Robison and Cody were the first ones he contacted.

“When I approached Bill about being a part of this film, he was on board right away,” Dortch said. “He said that people had been after him for years to make a sort of a follow-up to Athens, but that the time had never been right... until now.”

Part of what makes the time so ripe is the vibrant and twisted new breed of performers that has boiled up through Atlanta’s dive bars and rock clubs. Dortch had the distinct pleasure of filming Jessica Juggs in action as she “began shooting fireballs out of an unmentionable bodily orifice with a butane tank and a cigarette lighter.”

“There was also a moment where I had to ask myself if I was willing to take a fireball to the face to get this film made the right way,” Dortch added. “The answer to that question? A resounding yes.”

You can check out a sequence from that fiery show and other teaser clips at the film’s MySpace. Dortch and his crew have been shooting for about six months, with another six months of filming to go. Dortch hopes to have a completed film by mid-to-late 2008, and ideally We Fun would make an Atlanta premiere shortly thereafter.

Then, at long last, the non-players can have their day in the sun.

Related links:
Paste: Black Lips star as renegade rockers in upcoming film
Paste Band of the Week: Deerhunter
Paste: Metal of Honor - Mastodon and Saosin
YouTube: Athens, Ga.: Inside/Out

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

Mastodon singer/guitarist Brent Hinds suffered a "severe head injury after his performance on Sunday night's MTV Video Music Awards in Las Vegas," according to a statement released by the band's management. "He is being treated by a Las Vegas hospital where he remains hospitalized."

The hirsute rocker was playing a song just hours before, live from Nirvana alumnus cum Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl's luxury suite at the Palms Casino resort. Queens of the Stone Age ringleader Josh Homme - whose multi-artist collaborative series The Desert Sessions is in the works (including help from PJ Harvey) - performed live with the group on Mastodon's single, "Colony of Birchmen."

Watch the performance below:

MTV News reported that Hinds' injuries included a broken nose and two black eyes, the cause of both still kept a mystery to all media outlets.

"Thankfully, it seems he going [make a full recovery]," according to band manager Nick John. "All I know is he had a bad head injury, broken nose and blacked-out eyes. He doesn't recall much."

Paste wishes the Atlanta native a speedy recovery.

Related links:
QOTSA.com
MastodonRocks.com
FooFighters.com

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

Those dudes in Mastodon are a bunch of greedy bastards. Not only have they played the support role on various hard rock monster tours (including Tool, Metallica and Slayer) over the course of the last year or so. Not only did they perform in front of more than 30,000 people last Saturday at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, flying back Sunday night to headline the 100+ band Atlanta festival Corndogorama. Not only did they perform as cartoon snack food characters earlier this year at the beginning of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters. Not only did they... Well, you get this picture. All this and more has gone down for the members of Atlanta's pre-eminent metal band, and yet, they still want more.

Luckily, MTV is happy to oblige. This Saturday at 10 p.m., Headbanger's Ball will premiere the video for "Sleeping Giant," the second single from Blood Mountain, one of the esteemed 100 members of Paste's top albums of 2006 list. After the premiere, the video will slut itself all over MTV's various other stations in regular rotation. For those of you who are anti-television, first of all, you're so metal, and second of all, you can check out a teaser of the video on Headbanger's Blog today. Or at least, so we're told. At the time of this posting, it's not on the site, but we trust it will be sometime soon so we can get our headbang on before the workday ends.

Related links:
Mastodon - Blood Mountain
1,000 Words: Mastodon and more at Pitchfork Music Festival 2007
Headbanger's Blog

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

Graaaaaaaaaaaaah! This is what metal should be.

The coolest thing about Mastodon’s breakthrough effort, 2004’s Leviathan, was its cerebral focus on story and concept in a genre bedeviled (often intentionally) by cliché. Like its predecessor, Blood Mountain is a study in elemental force that rides the line between thrash and plod with enlightened originality and compositional skill to spare. While, lyrically, Blood Mountain cloaks itself in some of the cartoonish tropes of metal’s rune-littered psycho-tundra, musically it’s absolutely breathtaking. Dripping with textures and bubbling with riffs that actually lead somewhere, it offers sonic art in high form while, not incidentally, melting your face with its power.

The bearded, heavy-metal monsters of Mastodon have announced a slew of 2007 concert dates in support of their third studio album, Blood Mountain, released last September. Blood Mountain has been praised by critics and fans alike as a return to the heavy metal trends of the 80s with lyrics about Dungeons and Dragons warfare accentuated by more melodic song structure. Expect furious double-bassing and many a Norse epic reference to say the least if you plan to see Mastodon live.

To see the music video for Mastodon’s single “Colony of Birchmen,” visit BrooklynVegan.com.

Read more about Mastodon on Paste's Metal of Honor feature.

February
5 - Minneapolis, MN, First Avenue
7 - Grand Rapids, MI, Orbit Room
8 - Columbus, OH, Newport Music Hall
9 - Pittsburgh, PA, Rex Theatre
10 - Sayreville, NJ, Starland Ballroom
11 - Providence, RI, Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel
13 - Allentown, PA, Crocodile Rock Cafe
14 - Rochester, NY, Water Street Music Hall
15 - Clifton Park, NY, Northern Lights
16 - New Haven, CT, Toad's Place
17 - Washington, DC, 9:30 Club

It's the last frontier.

I can find many things to love about punk, rockabilly, psychobilly, indie rock, emo, screamo, hardcore, shoegazer, blues-based boogie, lo-fi, power pop, and just plain rock 'n’ roll. Electric guitars and I are old buddies, and we go way back. But I've never been a fan of metal. I would rather undergo a root canal than listen to Metallica. I think Ozzy Osbourne is a totally engaging reality TV star, but that's about it.

And yet, for reasons unknown, two new metal albums have shown up in my mailbox recently - the eponymous big-label debut from California’s Saosin, and something called Blood Mountain, from the atrociously-named Atlanta, Ga.-based, Mastodon.

I know what you're thinking, because I was thinking it too. Good God, Mastodon? Blood Mountain? The image wasn't aided in the least when I saw song titles like Crystal Skull” and Circle of Cysquatch. I conjured visions of the Stonehenge scene from This is Spinal Tap, and inside my brain, gap-toothed guys whipped their greasy hair around in some sort of heavy metal ecstasy while drinking goblets of fresh Type O Negative.

But you know what? After actually listening to it, I came to realize Blood Mountain is really great. It's loud, it's angry, it thrashes like crazy. No big surprises there. But it is also articulate, witty and wise. And every couple of minutes it evolves into something that can only be described as prog-thrash. The Mars Volta aims for this territory, too, but I'm always derailed about six minutes into any of that band’s fifteen-minute opuses, put off by the seemingly endless wankery and nonsensical lyrics. Not this time. Mastodon’s songs are tight and concise, but endlessly surprising. Just when you expect them to descend into the usual metal clichés, they veer off into completely unexpected and delightful directions. And these guys are seriously great musicians. I'm very impressed.

Saosin, on the other hand, takes similar hardcore elements and welds them to populist, early Def Leppard anthems. Seemingly a far more serious metal band than Def Lep ever was, Saosin revels in the same multi-tracked harmonies and soaring choruses that should win the band a large and devoted fanbase. In fact, Saosin will probably be huge if it ever gets the right promotion from EMI, and I suspect that will happen.

At the end of the day, I'm still not a big fan of metal as a genre. But these two albums are going a long way to change my mind.