This approach often creates a nice balance for the accessible material (as it did on The Hunter), and provides the highlights of the album when it makes the occasional veer towards mathcore (“Chimes at Midnight,” “Diamond in the Witch House”). Despite the ambition for more conventional structure and a commercial sheen, Brann Dailor and the rest of Mastodon do not slow their pace, instead shredding supersonically through the record. However, those tracks give way to the welcome heavy riffing of “High Road,” a sludge metal romp - in the vein of Torche or He Is Legend - with a big, anthemic chorus. Nevermind) and craft a clean sound to kick off the album. Similar to contemporaries Baroness, Mastodon take cues from the smooth production of hard rock records from the 90s (e.g. The opening two tracks, “Tread Lightly” and “The Motherload” fit this mold perfectly, both heavily-produced (vocal fades and all), heavily-guitared, and somewhat-catchy offerings. If the name doesn’t indicate it enough, the music on the follower Once More ‘Round the Sun does exactly that, playing up Mastodon’s roots in psychedelic, stoner, and grunge rock and polishing it into a hook-laden whole. However, few may have guessed that an act which was just recently among the best metal bands in America would move even further into rock than they did on 2011’s The Hunter.
Mastodon has never been a band to be artistically stagnant, so their gradual drift toward a more mainstream style (arguably beginning with the success of the single “ Colony of Birchmen” from Blood Mountain) shouldn’t be horribly shocking to any serious metal fan.
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