Mastodon have been one of the greatest metal bands of the 21st century.Their sophomore album, Leviathan, has gained much praise among the metal community.Their follow up to this album, BloodMountain, was somewhat of a let down.It was not by any means a bad album, It just wasn’t up to par with Mastodon’s standards.BloodMountain was to Mastodonwhat …And Justice For All was for Metallica, a sign that the band needed to change to stay relevant.Because of this striking comparison, there were many fears among fans that Mastodon would release a dumbed down, boring pop metal album similar to Metallica’s 1990 self titled album and continue to make mediocre metal for the duration of their career.This could not be farther from the truth.
When the album arrived in the mail the first thing that struck me was the Album Art.Mastodon has always led a one band war against generic Album Covers in the Metal scene (see Megadeth, Avenged Sevenfold, and Children of bodom album covers for perfect examples) and this album is no exception.The art work looks like something that could have been engraved on to a Japanese sword or artifact of some sort, the unique design and intricate details really stand out.
Now, on to the actual album.One thing that is quite apparent from the get go is that Mastodon have NOT dumbed down their music, on the contrary, Crack the Skye filled with odd time signatures, harmonized guitar parts that flow together amazingly, and dazzling drum fills by drummer Bran Dailor, who takes a much looser, almost Keith Moonlike style to drumming than most metal drummers.The music itself flows together almost like a Pink Floyd album, the songs transition into each other beautifully and it really feels like a full album, something many modern metal albums are lacking.The songs themselves are very deep sounding, there are heavy crushing riffs like the verse riff in the title track, but then there are cleaner more ambient moments such as the verse in “Quintessence.”You can really tell the band was experimenting here, there are banjo lines, weird phasy effects and synth lines.However these things never feel too overdone.When they are present they seem to compliment the song very well and don’t take away from the heaviness of the song. The Rhythm guitar remains the main focus of Mastodon.The riffs on the album are heavy yet very melodic and memorable, there is lots of acrobatic guitar harmonies and riffs that resemble Metallica’s earlier work.There are guitar solos on the album as well, but as with most of mastodons work, they are usually meant to compliment the song and not to show off or make people go “wow!! Listen to that!” The two guitarists, Bill Kelliher and Brent Hinds really show a sense of teamwork on this album, trading riffs, harmonies and solos throughout the song. The bass in some of the songs is not only present but plays a large role in laying down the main melody, but in other songs it is not present at all or barley audible, however for most of the album the bass plays a large enough role in the bands sound.There is a noticeable difference between this and Mastodon’s earlier work, there is no question that Mastodon’s earlier work such as the album “Remissions” is harsher and heavier with more screaming vocals by bassist Troy Sanders, but when compared to “Levathian” the album doesn’t seem too much of a departure.Most of all the album is not dumbed down at all, the instrumental workas well as musical complexity if anything is stepped up on this album, the influences taken from prog rock bands like Genesis and King Crimson really show. Mastodon has done a great job of blending punishing metal riffing with elements of progressive rock without sounding cheesy or forced. The quintessential song on the album is aptly named “Quintessence.”It begins with an interesting guitar riff in an odd time signature before going into a heavy, but melodic and very catchy chorus, it finally winds down into a downtuned breakdown with a guitar harmony at the end.
“Crack the Skye” is a concept album, the story involves a paraplegic who can travel through space and embarks on a journey that involves the spirit world, Russian Cults, Rasputin, and Satan.While the story itself may sound cheesy the lyrics themselves are quite good.They flow very well with the music and never feel forced as if they are obligated to tell the story even if it means sacrificing the overall sound.Similar to Levathian, Mastodon have succeeded in writing a good concept album.Listening to the whole album is an experience which a concept album should be.It takes you on a journey through music so to speak instead of force feeding you a story and hoping you’ll get the concept.“Crack the Skye” is very abstract and can be interpreted many different ways very much like Pink Floyds “Animals”
a throng of black cloaked humans tower over me, i lay there as i watch, or don't watch them, since it is all pitch black. Among this crowd are my enemies, the very people who drove me to this fate, they exchange faggotries, making their faux little "tribute" to the fallen, to secure the well being of their soul in the eyes of their peers. Then most of them move on with their pathetic lives, just another day for them. Some of them might even feel gratified in a way, im just a virtual trophy to add to a shelf of real ones for when its all they have to look at and be proud of, for when they are a fat wife marrying SUV driving soccer dad that is. Some seem visibly shaken by the whole thing, its a turning point for them, a revelation in a way, they are so fucking stubborn that it took the death of someone else for them to wake up. They will grow up to become bearded psuedo hippie bastard fuckwits who tour around schools playing acoustic guitar and singing about how if you isolate your fellow students they will run off and kill themselves, and how they know from experience exploiting my story in the process. You have seen these people, you know who i am talking about.
Maybe a few of the Clique sluts will unearth some of their inate necrophilia with the comment of they totally would have gone out with me if i was still alive. But i doubt it, and even if they did, would they be any better than the rest of the fucking world, we are all necrophliac fuckheads, we are obsessed with the dead, obsessed with what could have been, what would have been, and what will never be. No one gives a flying fuck about the living, even if it is they that need a flying fuck given. The dead feel no pain, and yet they are the most sensitive of all of us.
for that one moment i am cloaked in false glory, all the good i have never
done is resurrected by a man quoting a book i've never read. The basis of
a religion i've never given a rats ass about, and yet i am buried with it all. after
this day i am forgotten, a statistic, a facebook group, another victim, what "you"
dont want to end up like, and thats it. The bastards win whether they realize it
or not, and i lost.
and this ladies and gentlemen, is why i don't go and off myself right now. this
is what is keeping me from putting a .45 JHP into my head via the roof of my
mouth. This scene made me reconsider painting my walls a new shade of bloody
brains and bone fragments (now available at a lowes near you!) sure id love to just
end it all, but i can't. I am kept alive by a tank of compressed hatred, and
maybe its better that way. If the world is better off without me, then i intend
to stay alive as long as i can.
To my enemies, allthough you might not have met that horrible case of syphilis
and gonorrhea i have wished on you so many times, i thank you for your
constant back to back bullshit and your lies, rumors, and fake tough guy threats
as of exactly 32 minutes ago US time, we are one year closer to our impending doom, one year closer to the dropping of the bombs, the falling of the meteors, flooding of the world, whatever any way will do. this is by far the worst new year ive had in a while. its boring as fuck, im alone, as always, but sometimes the lonley new years are fun, for instance last year i played portal. this one sucked ass though. ive just been bored all day, nothing to do, and ive been angry all day, i listened to Hatebreeder by children of bodom this morning, made me feel a bit better, it described how i felt then, it described how i felt 20 minutes ago when i opened my profile up to hear it blasting, i have a bad feeling it will describe how i feel for the rest of my life, my hopeless, hateful life.
a few things made me angry today, i woke up and read some Noam Chomsky, i love Noam Chomsky, but the fact that he is so right makes me want to just blow shit up. the second reason is something a bit more complex i guess, so i was listening to public enemy and i came across some slightly anti semetic lyrics, basically hinting at "the jews killed christ and expect me to apologize for something my dj said?" (his DJ said something anti semetic and chuck D fired him) and that he supportnow there are a few things that piss me off about this
1)someone who i looked up to, who i think is multi talented and actually a smart guy resorts to the lowest, most played out religous bullshit ever,
2)as a man who promotes black power, racial equality, and fighting racism, to see him result to anti semetism just makes me sick, he protests against racism against his own people just so he can turn around and push around an ethnicity smaller than his own??? Im still wondering what he meant by these lyrics, it could be nothing, but as a guy who is really sensitive towards racism against blacks, youd think hed be a bit more sensitive towards other minorities. hypocricy just downright pisses me off. i found out hes religious which explains a lot, its amazing how christianity and islam (i hate them both) can take something or someone so rational and twist their mind to be a typical bigoted sheep. ill still listen
to his music either way. but that got me thinking, why does this stuff get me so angry, why do i still identify myself as a jew anyway, im agnostic, i hate what religion has done to our world, if judiasm were as big and widespread as christianity or islam id probably hate it too. but i figured it out, when i see the jews i see a people who are hated by the entire world for not much of a good reason at all, they are a scapegoat for everyone, this further fuels my hate for mankind, but also, id almost feel like id be abandoning them if i didnt call myself a jew and agree to take all the shit that i get from day to day for being that. i swear sometimes i just want to go back to judiasm start a group that just patrols around new york city with M16A1s and just blows the shit out of all the pussy ass anti semetic or racist dickeheads who think they are all high and mighty, wed have a slogan like "if your a racist dickhead, youll take one in the forhead" idk, thats a bit extreme but its a violent fantasy of mine. i hate racsim of all kinds, i especially hate hypocricy, when you combine the two i want to blow something up.
the political rant aside, this year fucking sucked!!! but it wasnt as bad as last year or the year before that, im a bit better off. at this point i know what i have to do to not be miserable, i just need to do it, hopefully thats where this year will come in. so i guess heres my new years resolutions.
Get better at guitar, a lot better
Get a girlfriend
get some friends*
gain some better social skills
not be so paranoid
restart martial arts **
*my definition of friends is someone i can count on most of the time, not all the time, thats impossible, just most of it, thats not too much to ask, but around where i live it seems it is
**i used to take itwhen i was like 7, i was a green belt i think, then i quit, and restarted when i was 14 and got to orange belt but quit because i was doing sports, i really want to restart, im in better shape now and i really want to be able to beat the shit out of people who fuck with me.
TL DR!!:: skip the second paragraph, its a political rant
completley stolen from rosamamosa's blog. anyway heres a path my life might take
-start a thrash/hardcore punk/psycadelic band
-play as the lead guitarist and tour the U.S.
-help contribute to the downfall of the pop/emo scene
-meet: steve vai, Kirk Hammett, Dave Mustaine, Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert, Lou Reed, James Hetfield, etc.
-get laid a bunch of times before eventually settling down with one girl
-the band breaks up, i get drafted to world war III after a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and every country that hates us (inotherwords the whole world)
-get sent home after i am shot in the leg.
-return home to see the entire nation in nuclear ruins (by this time my leg has healed) and spend the next 3 years trying to survive in a nuclear wasteland. my girlfriend has left me and i am a grumpy old veteran.
-use my pension money to move to Iceland (one of the few countries not effected by nuclear war) and become a studio guitarist and a sound engineer
-buy a beer ejecting helmet, while walking down a street my life gets turned around when a silver pickup truck pulls up to me and i see a guy in a chicken suit (now we all know people with beer ejecting helmets and guys with chickensuits dont get along) all of the sudden he runs over my foot.
-the band reunites, luckily, i had been practicng guitar and i can play my old guitar parts for touring. (but i have to tour in a wheelchair which sucks)
-find another girl who i love, find out she wants to move to Norway just like me.
-live the rest of my life in Norway with the woman i love, my life is perfect, except for one thing. i have the sudden urge to go to iceland for a vacation.
-buy a chicken suit and a silver truck in Iceland. as im driving i see this bastard in a beer ejecting helmet, god i hate these fuckers, they think they can just drink their problems away like that, motherfucker, he just flipped me off!!! thats it,
-run over the douchebags foot and drive away laughing, i hate those fuckers, serves him right. i hate beer ejecting helemets, i want to find the guy who invented him and beat the shit out of him. guys with beer ejecting helmets are a cancer that is destroying modern society, something must be done about these devious bastards.
so i went to a testament concert last night, my ears are still ringing. it was awesome though. the opening bands were pretty cool. there was this one band named Guerra. they were awesome, they had all these starts and stops and odd time signitures and guitar solos, really sick guitar solos. The lead guitarist was shredding it up on an SG. no one seemed to give them any enthusiasm. i did though, near the end they said "man i gotta be honest with you i hate this fucking town" with that i said "fuck yea!!!" i love honesty. i talked to them after their set was over, they were really cool guys and said they really appreciate that i liked their band. then these douchebags with Dimebag Darrell guitars, Black Label Society Jackets, and Tapout and WWE t shirts came up and started playing this generic, watered down pentatonic based metalcore shit and everyone had a shitfit. i wanted to fucking puke. its bands liek Guerra that are keeping the true spirit of metal alive and no one gives a shit but play a zakk wylde tribute and everyone goes nuts. before i get too negative here, TestAmenT was AWESOME!!! the two gutiarists (Alex Skolnick and Eric Peterson) worked together amazingly, and chuck billy can still sing (and scream) like a motherfucker. they nailed all of their songs. The pit was great too, it wasnt one of those try to kill everyone pits but just a nice go fucking crazy metal pits. i pushed my way towards the front to see Alex Skonick and threw the horns and shouted every time he took a solo, i was within 10 feet of him. he nailed his solos perfectly. unfortunatly i had to leave early because my dad called me and threatened to drive away if id idnt come out to teh car . the good news is TestAmenT is coming back next year so i can see them again and hopefully ill get to meet them some time or another
TLR : i saw testament, they kicked ass, it was the most fun i had this year, Guerra are awesome
fuck people, i hate them all, i hop a fucking plague wipes out the entire human race. I hate my country, we are all a bunch of pompous dicks who shove our opinions and beliefs down others throats, when whatever country we piss of next nukes the hell out of us ill be glad to see our eyes pop out of our skulls and our brains (or whats left of them) fried by nuclear radiation, id love to see every rich ass politician in the white house slowly eaten by cockroaches who survived the nuclear apocolypse. you brought this upon us, i wish you the worst of deaths. fuck the pit too, a fucking online bear trap, i would be a much better guitar player and person if i wasnt stuck in that wretched place every stupid immature 4chan reject can fuck off, it will be comforting to kno.w that when you die the only thing you will have left behind will be a couple of "UG ftw" and "run faster tom" comments which will be non existant because of years of nuclear winter or well just be wiped out by a plague and there will be no one to read those comments. you will be nothing but a failed waste of human life. i hate myself too, ive already made a blog and a shitload of threads about it. w/e i dont care, im as good as dead anyway. i dont fucking exist now and i wont exist then.
i decided not to post this in the pit because i know id be met wiht "kill yourself" "lololololololol mudkipz" and all that 4chan Jr. bullshit that has plagued this website.
anyway...... so i barley have any friends, i have hung out with friends two times the entire summer, ive never had a girlfriend and im 17, thats bad, every time i hang out wiht a large group of people i am usually ignored or hated if i open my mouth, most people seem to tell me "you dont get it". basically i dont say the right things at the right times, i dont know what the fuck that means, what does that mean i dont get it, but i guess its true, i just dont get people, im either akward as fuck or too talkative, usually akward, i used to blame everyone else, fuck the world, etc. but now i see its myself that i should blame, i feel like i have dug myself into this rut of social anxiety that is going to be hard to get out of. I have gotten so used to the feeling of not fitting and being alone its like i dont know anything else, i feel that if i really put my mind to it i can probably have a better social life and even a girlfriend but i dont know where to fucking start, ive fucked up pretty badly. i know, this blog is a mess, its not like anyone is going to read it anyway. but i prefer this to making a " iR so depressed" thread, im not forcing anyone to read anything, if you want to help me, fuckin awesome! if not, than you dont have to even read this, whatever.
Draw back in silence to dwell in anxiety, No matter where I am, I'm alone. I'm crying outloud the tears of blood I bleed, so fuck the world, I'll go now, I don't care. (Who cares?)
i would suspect the following four people of being aliens in disguise
[img]http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/ 08/16/mahmoud_ahmadinejad_wideweb__470x364,0.jpg[/ img]
[img]http://www.rubinville.com/dailydave/uplo aded_images/George_Bush-744618.jpg[/img]
both of these "opponents" have similar monkey like qualities, coincidence? i think not. My theory is that A monkey like race of aliens sent two of their least intelligent bastard children to ruin the human race with ignorance, stupidity, and a twisted moral system.
i first noticed her on hot chicks threads on both this site and another forum i visit, despite the posts of "omgz so h0T!!!" i fail to see what is so great about her, frankly i dont like perfect women, i am far from perfect in appearence and i dont like to in any way support the high standards the living monstrosity that is the mainstream media holds for women of this generation. the fact is Anne Hathaway is completley devoid of the flaws that make us human, of all these double agents it is the one i fear the most, it is clear that it has an exceptional understanding in shapeshifting and out of the four is the only one who has made the complete transformation into human form
quite contrary to "anne hathaway" tila tequila seems to take the appearence of an alien being who has completley FAILED at shapeshifting, yes this is the high school dropout of hostile alien being currently living among mankind. from what i can tell tila tequila seems to have originated from an insect like alien race. i dont know exactly what that is but its certainly not human. the saddest thing is people have actually fallen for her strategy of throwing a big pair of boobs on to cover up her alien like facial features.
i am not 100% certain of exactly what agenda the latter two have on this earth but judging by their appearence and influence and popularity i can only guess it has something to do with the complete eradication of the male sex.
so youve heard my opinion , who do YOU think is an alien hiding among us.
i had this in a thread but i decided to make a blog out of it because i just dont have enough shit on my profile.
so last night after a good 4 hours of GTAIV and listening to Pantera i decided to nod off at 2 oclock, this was the dream i had. i dont know if this belongs in the gamer thread or the dream interp thread so ill just make my own. So remember that game Kingdom Hearts. I had this dream that took place in Kingdom Hearts. Sora and Donald and Goofy were walking away to from some quest or something (if you remember, after and before each quest you had to go in teh gummi ship and it was a pain in the ass) so they have this conversation (i only remember some of the words so im paraphrasing) Donald duck: we completed a quest that means we get to go to the GUMMI SHIP!!!! Sora: goddammit i dont want to go to the gay little gummi ship!!!! its such a pain in the ass Goofy: dont say such bad things about the gummi ship Donald: why are you acting like this, when life gets you down, sing a song!!! Sora: maybe its because i have to travel through the universe with a bunch of incompitent retards in a ship that looks like its designed by michael jackson!!! ok so i added the michael jackson part but he said something liek that. He continues to have little outbursts against his friends and stuff and it comes to a climax when theyre at the hometown (i forgot the name but its the first place you go in the game) Donald: why are you doing this, we are your friends, Sora: you dont exist Goofy: how could you say that. Sora: its true, and ill prove it, your just in my imagination, if you were real i would feel remorse for doing this!!! he then proceeds to savagly beat Donald Duck with a brick and strangling him (and yes he made the funniest noises known to man. this doesnt make sense because id feel bad about beating Donald Duck even if it was fake, but its a dream) after hes beaten kicked, and curbstomped Donald Duck he screams YOU DONT EXIST!!!! goofy: you killed my friend Sora; hes not real, neither is this world, its fake All of the sudden all of the Kingdom Hearts characters start to fall down dead as the world is eaten by a giant black hole or something, everyone dies except Goofy and Sora. Then it goes to thirty years later and Sora is working in a Honda factory in japan and hes losing his hair and he has glasses, then some guy informs him that Goofy has been addicted to heroin and hung himself. then it kind of zooms out on him or something and i woke up. the outro to "floods" by pantera was playing at the end which kind of made it extra depressing. so yea thats my dream, again i paraphrased some of the convorsations but it was really close to what they said. It was depressing but kind of funny because its something so wholesome turned so horribly wrong.
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Fuzzbox91's blogs, last updated : May 5, 2009
. the good news is TestAmenT is coming back next year so i can see them again and hopefully ill get to meet them some time or another
R : i saw testament, they kicked ass, it was the most fun i had this year, Guerra are awesome
