To give a face, a name, to something as abhorrent as cancer is a bold move. For Mastodon, who have recently seen friends and family members face the disease, it was essential. Because this band feel everything they do: every nuance, every note, every grain of static on every riff. The heaviness all comes from the heart, as glib and throwaway that may sound. ‘Emperor of Sand’ is Mastodon’s seventh full-length, a concept album about time and mortality and yet another towering release.
Make no mistake, this is a Mastodon record for the ages. Like the others before it, this is a piece of art to ease yourself into, to indulge in and rediscover every time you press play. ‘Emperor of Sand’ is unlike any individual Mastodon album, rather collating everything they’ve done to date. And it’s wonderful. The tender, deeply personal storytelling present on ‘Crack the Skye’ is here, as are the expansive, progressive homages to the classic rock bands held so dear to the band’s hearts. But it’s far from a cut-and-paste job.
There’s hope, despair and everything in between. For all the dirty riffing and chunky, meat-stacked walls of drums, there’s the chiming Ancient Kingdom or Precious Stones’ jangly chorus and guitar hero climax.
The key thing is they’re still heavy as shit when they fancy it. The riffs remain completely bestial, crashing against the proggy templates to remind you how Mastodon earned their name. Andromeda’s opening, for example, is a slab of sonic brutality but it’s underpinned by Brann Dailor’s dexterous drumming and that vocal interplay.
Mastodon are basically the Beatles of heavy metal, but with better haircuts, and here their nuanced melodies slide over one another on chorus after chorus after chorus. The hooks here are gargantuan. There are ‘The Hunter’ levels of catchiness on display, and it’s thanks to Dailor. Again, Troy Sanders and Brent Hinds’ lines pepper this record with variety, complexity and palpable pain, but Dailor owns ‘Emperor of Sand’.
He transforms Show Yourself and Steambreather into beefed-up Queens of the Stone Age bangers, while Roots Remain’s chorus is the single best vocal melody Mastodon have ever conjured. Better than Curl of the Burl, better than anything from ‘Blood Mountain’, better than everything. The melodies on this thing sink their hooks into every surface and Dailor emerges as arguably the band’s star player.
In years to come, when we’re too idle to read, the dictionary will be an online database of interactive pictures and ‘perfection’ will simply be a link to this album. If you want heavy, they’ve got heavy. If you want prog, they’ve got prog. If you want singalongs, Christ they’ve got them – it’s not what you’d expect from a record about cancer.
As Jaguar God’s gorgeous plucked intro drops you into a seven-plus minute maelstrom of Mastodonian majesty, just accept that this is the album of the year. There’s no other band doing what Mastodon do to the level that they do it, or for the amount of time they’ve been doing it. Be thankful you have this band, because nothing better is coming along.
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