Mastodon’s excellent 2009 album Crack The Skye sounds like Ozzy Osbourne did some LSD and decided to write a sludge metal record. That’s the best way to describe it in a nutshell, but peek under the covers and there is an incredible amount going on as Mastodon’s mastery over metal is the stuff of recent legend. They’ve quickly become one of the most influential metal bands of all-time following 2004’s Leviathan which was a loose concept album based off the infamous novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Crack The Skye expands Mastodon’s palette even further, combining thrash, math rock, hardcore, prog, and even some classic rock thrown into the mix. It’s an eclectic grab bag of epicness that’s made even more impressive by the fact that it features three lead singers, with Brent Hinds (the dude who sounds like Ozzy), Brann Dailor, and Troy Sanders all grabbing lead vocal time on the mic.
I rarely do this, but considering the expansive set of themes this album covers I think it’s only fair to let Mastodon themselves describe it for you. Here’s how Dailor describes Crack The Skye:
“It’s about a crippled young man who experiments with astral travel. He goes up into outer space, goes too close to the sun, gets his golden umbilical cord burned off, flies into a wormhole, is thrust into the spirit real, has conversations with spirits about the fact that he’s not really dead, and they decide to help him. They put him into a divination that’s being performed by an early-20th-century Russian Orthodox sect called the Klisti, which Rasputin is part of.
Knowing Rasputin is about to be murdered, they put the young boy’s spirit inside of Rasputin. Rasputin goes to usurp the throne of the czar and is murdered by the Yusupovs, and the boy and Rasputin fly out of Rasputin’s body up through the crack in the sky and head back. Rasputin gets him safely back into his body.
That’s the basic story, but it’s all metaphors for personal sh*t.”
– Brann Dailor to Billboard.com
Absolutely epic.
Standout Songs: “Divinations”, “Oblivion”, “The Czar: Usurper / Escape / Martyr / Spiral”
