MASTODON COME OF AGE

Mastodon might with their sixth installment just have made the Heavy Metal album of the year

MASTODON, "Once More 'round The Sun", (Reprise/ Warner)

Succinctly put, Atlanta quartet Mastodon's sixth album may very well be one of the best Heavy Metal albums you'll hear all year – if not the best all over.

With "Once More 'round The Sun" the band continues with their explicit intention in recent years: To make their occasionally complex rock music more accessible.

If the two previous albums, "Crack The Skye" and "The Hunter", were the first steps to achieve said goal, "Once  More. . ." thunders across the border to the land of mass acceptance. Where an appointment to majesties of metal land awaits.

This album practically overflows with monstrous metal riffs, high class melodies and well thought out and executed guitar harmonies and solos.

Peak performance
We're talking Mastodon in a grandiose and superior performance at the very peak of their powers here. That's saying something considering that this is a band who has shown both the willingness and the skill to kick the occasionally limping and tired warhorse, that is Heavy Metal, in the side and send it forwards to new glory.

So all right; Mastodon have become accessible but fans don't have to fear that the band is going into battle with Airbourne for the “three chords, sexual innuendo and persistent “are you ready to rock" cries" market. Entertaining though that can be.

You've still got enough mood- and rhythm changes here to make even the most experienced coordinator of timetables an insomniac for weeks on end. Never before though have the elements in Mastodon's music fit together so seamlessly.

From the Thin Lizzy derived guitar harmonics via the syncopated backwards rhythmic b- and c parts to the sweeping verses leading into one banner waving chorus after the other.

In other words there is a lot happening here and it'll probably take quite a long time to get to the bottom of the inticracies of this album. Thank God. I'm already looking forward to listening to it again.

Finally I cannot strongly enough urge Mastodon to get out on the road headlining. The support slots we've seen the band in in recent years simply doesn't leave enough room to do this music justice.