The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Mastodon · produced and mixed by Brendan O’Brien · Reprise Records · seven tracks, about fifty minutes
Mode
Sludge and progressive metal turned toward song: slower tempos, clean voices, two long suites in the manner of the 1970s
Mythos
The soul’s flight out of the body and its return; the flier too near the sun; the murdered holy man and the falling Czar
Phase
Seven tracks: three compact songs, a four-part suite at the exact centre, two mid-length songs, and the longest piece last
Presentation
Album; the band’s fourth, seven tracks, about fifty minutes, released in March 2009 by Reprise Records
Register
Interlocking guitars, drums that lead the riffs, three clean lead voices and a guest, keyboards set inside the mass
Scale
One soul through a paralysed body, a spirit realm and a falling court, and one family’s loss
Governing Proposition
A sludge metal band slows its tempos, gives up the scream for three clean voices, and builds a record around two long suites: a soul’s flight out of a paralysed body, through a spirit realm and a murdered holy man’s Russia, and back, with one family’s grief named in the title and heard at the centre of the journey.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The first voice on the record is the drummer’s. Oblivion is a mid-tempo song, and before any of the record’s weight arrives it sets the register the whole album will keep: sung, not screamed, with the voices lifting at the chorus over the guitars into a hard, open height. For a band whose first records were known for abrasion, the opening is an announcement. The turn to song is made in the first minutes, and made by the player who will lead the record from behind the kit.
Crack the Skye is Mastodon’s fourth studio album, released in March 2009 by Reprise Records, recorded in Atlanta in 2008, and produced and mixed by Brendan O’Brien. The band was Troy Sanders on bass and vocals, Brent Hinds on lead guitar and vocals, Bill Kelliher on guitar and Brann Dailor on drums and vocals. Scott Kelly of Neurosis sings on the title track. It was the band’s first record of its kind on a major label, and it was made before a core audience that valued its ferocity.
The architecture is measurable. Seven tracks run about fifty minutes. The first three are compact songs, Oblivion, Divinations and Quintessence, together about a quarter of an hour; then The Czar, in four parts, at the exact centre; then Ghost of Karelia and the title track; then The Last Baron, about thirteen minutes, last. The two long pieces take nearly half the running time. The slack is in the first half. Divinations, a short single led in by a banjo figure, is the record’s most conventional track and is not needed for its journey, and Quintessence shares its gallop with Ghost of Karelia. Two soft places in seven, neither in the spine.
Movement II
The Czar runs nearly eleven minutes in four named parts: Usurper, Escape, Martyr, Spiral. It opens slowly, tinted by keyboards, moves through stealth and flight to martyrdom, and ends in Spiral, where the guitars climb in a long, mounting figure that is the grandest moment on the record, dreadful and exalted at once. The music changes register at each turn, so that the suite enacts the story it tells. The four titles make a passion in miniature, and its place, track four of seven, makes it the record’s core.
The story is known from outside the record. By the band’s own account, a paraplegic young man leaves his body, rises too near the sun, is drawn through a wormhole into a spirit realm, and is sent back in time into the body of Rasputin in Tsarist Russia; Rasputin is murdered by conspirators, and the soul returns to its own body. The record does not make this legible. A listener without the account hears flight, menace and loss, a court and a killing, and a homecoming, and the titles alone point to the rest.
What the record builds from this is the oldest of journeys: the soul’s flight out of the body and back, the shaman’s passage and the descent and return, joined to the flier who rises too near the sun and to the murdered holy man. The sequence carries it. The soul goes out through the first half, reaches its centre in a falling court, and comes home at the end, and that order bears the myth rather than decorating it. What holds the myth below its full height is construction: the archetypes arrive as stages of a plot, Rasputin is a name and a setting more than a figure, and the frame has to be supplied from the band’s account.
Movement III
Ghost of Karelia gallops. It and Quintessence share a drive and a tonal world, heavy guitars, a warmth of keyboard and a cold minor, and they show both the record’s law and its limit. One law runs through everything: the guitars interlock, the drums lead, the three clean voices are constant, and the palette holds from the first track to the last. But the record’s register is narrower than its story. The paralysed body, the wormhole and the Czar’s court all sound alike, and that sameness is coherence bought partly with range.
The inheritance is the band’s own. Remission (2002) was abrasive sludge; Leviathan (2004) and Blood Mountain (2006) were concept records; behind them stand the Melvins and Neurosis, and behind those the progressive rock of the 1970s. Here the tempos slow, the scream is almost wholly given up for clean singing in three voices, the songs are given room, the sound is warmer and cleaner, and the long suite returns in the manner of the seventies. The turn is real and fully taken. But Neurosis, Tool, Opeth and the band’s own two previous records had already joined metal weight to progressive length and concept, and the record turns toward older models more than away from its tradition.
The making is the record’s distinction, and Dailor is its centre. His drumming is melodic and constantly varied, and it leads the riffs rather than keeping time behind them, without losing the beat. Hinds’s and Kelliher’s guitars interlock in counterpoint, and O’Brien keeps the mass legible: every part placed, the bass audible, the keyboards inside the weight without softening it. The costs are in the voices. The singing is often strained, the harmonies at the peaks are thin against the instruments, and the words that the frame needs are delivered half buried. Some riffs in the middle songs repeat the band’s gallop.
Movement IV
The title track is the record’s grief. By the band’s account the title names Skye Dailor, the drummer’s sister, who took her own life as a girl, and asks the sky to open and let her through. The song is slow and heavy, and Scott Kelly’s rough voice is set against the band’s, a guest from the elder tradition the band came out of. It is an elegy that does not console. Its height is grave rather than exalted, and it is placed second to last, so that the grief stands just before the soul’s return.
Here the record says most nearly what it discloses. Grief appears as a wish to be free of the body: the one who cannot move leaves himself, the dead are asked through the sky, and the whole journey becomes a figure for letting the dead go while staying alive. The sound carries this as fully as the words and further, since the words are half buried; the climb of Spiral and the release at the end of the record make the passage out of the self and back audible. That one grief is stated at the centre and heard in the form, and it reaches beyond the mood of flight and menace that surrounds it.
The grief also gives the record its widest reach. The family enters here, the truest of the orders the record holds; around it stand a consciousness leaving and returning to its body, a body paralysed and released, a state in its last days, a spirit realm and a martyred holy man, the sun and a wormhole. Six orders, and one frame joins them. But most arrive as images and settings, the history is a backdrop, and the frame that joins them is an outline the record does not make audible. The span is wide; what holds it is integration.
Movement V
The Last Baron is the longest piece and the last, about thirteen minutes, and it makes the return a culmination rather than a coda. It gathers the record’s riffs, carries them through a long instrumental ascent, and ends in a sung return that resolves the album’s tension into release. A figure heard early in the piece comes back transformed before the end. Some of its instrumental extension is permitted rather than compelled, but the thirteen minutes hold, paced by the drums and kept legible by the production.
The field the record entered was the metal of the 2000s, suspicious of clean voices and of seventies forms. Its force was to show that a sludge band could make a full progressive concept album, slow and sung, without losing weight, and do it on a major label with wide success. It is commonly placed among the strongest metal albums of its decade and is a reference point for the progressive turn in heavy music that followed. But that turn was already under way, in Opeth, Baroness, Neurosis and Tool, and no record can be named with confidence as having turned on this one. It widened a movement more than it reorganised a field.
Seventeen years have tested it within its field. The band played it complete on tour soon after release, it has been reissued, and it is widely held to be the band’s best record; listeners return to its layered guitars, its shifting meters and the cross-references between its suites, and find more structure each time. The production is clean and the playing by hand, so it has not dated as the heavily processed metal of its years has. Its reach beyond metal is narrower, and its return is formal more than semantic: the words were never legible enough to deepen. What it holds is a journey out of the body and home, and one name in its title.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test bites less here than on most rock albums of this length. The two suites are the spine and cannot go: The Czar carries the Russian centre of the journey in four named parts, and The Last Baron gathers the record’s riffs and brings the soul back. Oblivion must open, setting the sung register before any of the weight. The title track, the grief song, stands second to last so that the elegy comes just before the return. The test finds slack in the middle. Divinations, a short single led in by a banjo figure, is not needed for the journey, and Quintessence and Ghost of Karelia share a gallop so closely that one could go with little loss. Two soft places in seven, neither in the spine.
Score: 8.1 / 10
What can be stated is narrow and real. The record discloses grief as a wish to be free of the body: the one who cannot move leaves himself, the dead are asked through the sky, and the whole journey is a figure for letting the dead go while staying alive. The title track says this most nearly, an elegy that does not console. Sound discloses as fully as words: the long climb of The Czar’s last part and the release at the end of The Last Baron make the passage out of the self and back audible. What holds the figure is that the frame is carried by an outline the record does not make legible, and the lyric is fragmentary and half buried. It stands level with Zooropa at 7.8 and below High Violet at 8.0, whose words state their condition.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Elevation is the record’s chief power, and it comes often. Oblivion rises at its chorus, the sung voices lifted over the guitars into a hard, open height. The Czar builds over nearly eleven minutes from a slow, keyboard-tinted opening to Spiral, where the guitars climb in a long, mounting figure, the grandest moment on the record, dreadful and exalted at once. The title track’s height is grave, a slow, heavy elegy with a raw guest voice. The Last Baron ends in a long instrumental ascent and a sung return. Quintessence and Ghost of Karelia have drive more than height, Divinations brilliance more than grandeur. The highest moments belong to the instruments; the singing at the peaks strains. It stands below ’Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! at 8.7.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Myth is plentiful, and the sequence builds it. The frame is the soul’s journey out of the body and back, the shaman’s flight, joined to the flier who rises too near the sun and to the murdered holy man and the falling Czar. The Czar’s four titles, Usurper, Escape, Martyr and Spiral, make a passion in miniature, and the order of the record carries the soul out and home, so the pattern bears weight in the form. The title grounds it in a particular, a family’s loss. What holds the axis below the bar is construction: the archetypes arrive as story beats, Rasputin is a setting more than a figure, and the frame is mostly known from outside the record. It stands below Star Wars and Master of Puppets at 8.4, which build their figures in image and word.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own sludge and progressive metal, from the abrasion of Remission (2002) through the concept records Leviathan (2004) and Blood Mountain (2006), and behind it the Melvins, Neurosis and the progressive rock of the 1970s. The turn is real and wholly taken: tempos slowed, the screamed voice almost entirely given up for clean singing in three voices, the songs given room, keyboards and a warmer, cleaner sound, and two long suites. The stake was real too, a first record of this kind on a major label, before a core audience that valued the band’s ferocity. What holds it below the bar is the path. Neurosis, Tool, Opeth and the band’s own two previous records had already joined metal weight to progressive length and concept, and the record turns toward older models more than away from its tradition.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The form knows the journey, and the sequence is counted here, once. The first suite sits at the exact centre, track four of seven, so the Russian episode is the record’s core; the longest piece comes last, so the return is a culmination rather than a coda. Within The Czar the music changes register at each of its four turns, from stealth through flight to martyrdom and a rising spiral, and the form enacts the plot. The interlocking guitars and Dailor’s leading drums make the riffs narrate: a figure from early in The Last Baron returns transformed before the end. Played as a set of songs, the record would keep its riffs and lose its passage. What holds the figure is the five shorter songs, which are songs rather than stations and could be reordered without much loss.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Seventeen years of return is good evidence within its field. The band played the record complete on tour soon after release, and listeners treat it as a record to be studied. The yield is in the making: the dense layering of the guitars, the shifting meters in Dailor’s parts and the cross-references between the two suites keep opening on rehearing, and the hidden frame invites decoding, so each return finds structure the last one missed. What holds the figure is that the return is formal more than semantic. The words do not open further, because they were never very legible, and the frame, once known, is a story rather than a question. Seventeen years is a short span, and part of the figure is forecast.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The field is the metal of the 2000s, and the contest is with the band’s peers in progressive and sludge metal and with metal’s suspicion of clean voices and of seventies forms. The intrinsic force is clear: the record showed that a sludge band could make a full progressive concept album, slow and sung, without losing weight, and do it on a major label with wide success. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record is commonly placed among the strongest metal albums of its decade, and it is a reference point for the progressive turn in heavy music that followed it. The reach is bounded. That turn was already under way, in Opeth, Baroness, Neurosis and Tool, and no record or band can be named with confidence as having turned on this one. It stands far below Master of Puppets at 8.9.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Survival is weighed over seventeen years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the record survives as released, in print and streamed, and its sequence is heard as one. Presence is strong within its field: it is widely held to be the band’s best record, it was played complete on tour, and it has been reissued; its reach beyond metal is narrower. The fabric is little fixed to its year. The production is clean, the playing is by hand, and the record’s models are of the 1970s, so it has not dated as the period’s heavily processed metal has. It stands level with Third at 8.2, above m b v at 8.0 for its longer span, and far below what has lasted centuries.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is high and load-bearing in the instruments. Dailor’s drumming is the record’s distinction: melodic, constantly varied, leading the riffs rather than following them, without losing the beat. Hinds’s and Kelliher’s guitars interlock in counterpoint, and the leads, in The Czar’s last part above all, are shaped rather than merely fast. O’Brien keeps a dense arrangement legible: every guitar part placed, the bass audible, the keyboards inside the mass without softening it. The long pieces are paced, and The Last Baron’s thirteen minutes hold. The costs are real. The singing, in three untrained voices, is often strained, the harmonies at the peaks are thin against the instruments, and the delivery buries the words the frame needs. It stands below Low at 9.0 and Kid A at 9.2.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The two most distant elements are the banjo figure that opens Divinations and the grief of the title track with its guest voice; in tempo, the thrash of Divinations against the slow opening of The Czar. They obey one law. The interlocking riffing and the leading drums run through everything, the clean three-voice singing is constant, and the palette of heavy guitars, a warmth of keyboard and a cold minor holds from the first track to the last. The frame joins history, cosmos and grief under one physics, the soul’s flight. What holds the figure is range: the record’s register is narrower than its story, and the paralysed body, the wormhole and the Czar’s court sound alike. That sameness is coherence, but narrowness is not, and the figure stands at its threshold.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held, as a self leaving its body and returning; the body is held, paralysed and then released. The family enters through the dead sister in the title, the record’s truest order. History and the state enter as Tsarist Russia, the conspirators and the falling Czar. The sacred is the spirit realm and the martyred holy man; the natural order is the sun, the sky and the wormhole. Six orders, and one frame joins them. What holds this lowest is integration: most orders arrive as images and settings, the history is a backdrop, and the record holds them in an outline it does not make audible. It stands below Remain in Light at 7.6.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.1 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.4, The Sublime at 8.3, then The Imperishable and The Archetypal Deep at 8.2. Drumming that leads the riffs and a production that keeps a dense mass legible, elevation in five of seven tracks and at length in both suites, a record that has not dated in seventeen years, and the soul’s flight and return borne by the order of the record.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.5: six orders under one frame, most of them images and settings held in an outline the record does not make audible. Below the rest, The Unconcealment at 7.8 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.9: one grief is disclosed at the centre while the frame stays buried in the words, and the record widened a progressive turn in heavy music that was already under way.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.1 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.1, The Made at 8.4, The Inner Law at 8.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.2, The Archetypal Deep at 8.2, The Swerve at 8.1, Pressure on Tradition at 7.9 and The Unconcealment at 7.8 all fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.8, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.5.
Basis · Crack the Skye, the album as first released by Reprise Records in March 2009, seven tracks in their original order, about fifty minutes; recorded in Atlanta in 2008, produced and mixed by Brendan O’Brien. Tracks: Oblivion; Divinations; Quintessence; The Czar (I. Usurper, II. Escape, III. Martyr, IV. Spiral); Ghost of Karelia; Crack the Skye; The Last Baron. Judged from knowledge of the recording, its making and its reception; no recording or lyric sheet was in hand. The album as released is the unit; later packaging and the band’s live performances of the whole record are used only as evidence of survival. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted. Running times are given only roughly. The story the record follows and the dedication of its title are given as the band’s own account. Facts that could not be verified, among them the day of release, the studio, the maker of the cover, the contents of later editions, any recording of the live performances, the record’s chart placing, the band’s account of the album’s place in a larger cycle and the circumstances of the band around the sessions, are not given.