The shadow of cruel mortality has fallen across two of the year’s biggest metal releases, both unavoidably steeped in grief for much-loved creative talents taken far too soon. After processing Tomas Lindberg’s final At The Gates record, The Ghost Of A Future Dead, we’re confronted with the first Mastodon album without the unique voice and guitar wizardry of Brent Hinds, who quit the band last March and died five months later.
Mastodon’s previous LP, 2021’s double platter Hushed And Grim, was itself born of sorrow following the death of their long-time manager, Nick John. It was ambitious, audacious and liberally sprinkled with Mastodon’s patent genius, but attention couldn’t help flagging on a few mid-tier tunes. Nothing about Marrow Deep is mid-tier; every song pulls its considerable weight, maintaining an artisanal consistency across its comparatively concise 63 minutes.
More than once Brent declared to the press his dislike of heavy metal, bringing more of the psychedelic, progressive and punk influences to bear on the band’s sound. So perhaps it’s no surprise that this is the heaviest and most devotedly metallic Mastodon have sounded for 20 years.
After spending decades broadening their sonic palette and refining their melodic nous, many of the Atlanta outfit’s fans have long yearned for a return to the brute-force riffing and volatile aggression of their early work. The opening song’s vivid title, Barbarian’s Blood, confirms that the time is now, and the tune marauds with pugilistic intensity through Neurosis-damaged sludge chops, d-beats and exuberant guitar harmonies.
Tense, heaving chords and hammering drums continue to dominate Poisonous Weapons, but perhaps out of respectful restraint, there’s no guitar solo until the fifth song, Out Like A Lamb. When it finally arrives it makes up for the wait, new boy Nick Johnston bringing his Satriani-schooled precision to a full minute of cosmic heroism, flamboyant but maintaining a melodic melancholy.
There are still shades of 70s prog, but they’re fleeting moments of light relief among the head-caving metal. Witness the quirky notes soothing the jittery dynamics of Your Ghost Again, the intergalactic Moog in Snakes For Dinner, which features Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, or the burbling electric piano and dogfighting Hammond over closing epic The Three Fates, enhanced by a slavering vocal from Clutch’s Neil Fallon. The record’s most prestigious guest star – only Geezer bloody Butler – provides a bass intro to The Vanishing, the closest Marrow Deep gets to a chill-out zone, with bluesy guitars and spacey vocals building to a tumultuous crescendo.
Mastodon fans will always nitpick over this or that LP, but the band have never really put a foot wrong in 25 years, maturing from the ravenous young bucks of the early millennium to the grizzled gateway legends of today. Their development has been a thrill to behold, as has the prog-sludge scene that flourished in their wake. Marrow Deep may not shepherd us into bold new pastures, but after the first tragic breach of their line-up, it makes sense to revisit old stomping grounds with newfound purpose and profundity. Not for the first time, Mastodon have snatched joy from the jaws of heartbreak.
Marrow Deep is out August 28 via Loma Vista Recordings.