Mastodon
Marrow Deep
LOMA VISTA
Let’s take a quick journey through space-time. Last August, Mastodon’s (at that point ex) lead guitarist and co-vocalist Brent Hinds died in a traffic collision. He’d left the band on confusing terms earlier in the year, with both sides giving conflicting accounts of his departure. In the 53 weeks since, his ex-bandmates have spoken extensively and with impressive candor about Hinds and his death. It is, tragically, familiar territory for the Atlanta band. Their 2021 full-length Hushed & Grim was a tribute to their manager, who had passed away in 2018, while their 2009 masterpiece Crack the Skye explored the death of drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor’s teenage sister. Mastodon are a band swarmed by ghosts, haunted by an endless, all-too-human array of untimely tragedies.
If such a phrase can be used here, it’s a pleasure to report that their ninth studio album Marrow Deep is among the finest, richest, and most electrifying of their career. Mastodon have suffered some mild growing pains, in which they’ve occasionally tried to smooth out some of the spectacular heaviness of their earlier records in order to develop into a more palatable—if still eccentric—Southern rock band. Marrow Deep completely jettisons any of these awkward ambitions. These 12 monster tracks play to every one of Mastodon’s strengths while adding some bold new flavors into the heady mix. As you’d expect, it also courses with a sense of melancholy: a deep, dark, and otherworldly aura that’s both cathartic and sometimes genuinely spine-tingling.
Mastodon’s psychedelic-tinged metal has long aimed to rip your soul from your body—a literal plot point in both Crack the Skye and the later stages of their equally sensational Blood Mountain three years prior. Here, however, the ghostly observations come from a much darker place, somewhere the band doesn’t allow us to journey into. Nowhere is this spookier than on the spacious middle eight of “Poisonous Weapons,” which culminates with Dailor’s hair-raising howl: “I can feel you watching me.” This intricate, dreamy prog mode makes multiple memorable appearances, including the opening of the pummeling “In the Ruins,” whose structural shift feels like a rupture in life, when tranquil beauty is suddenly replaced by abrasive, all-encompassing darkness.
As humans often do in such circumstances, Mastodon turned to a cast of friends for support. Marrow Deep’s A-list guest spots never overwhelm the music, instead enriching these already sharply arranged and exhilarating tracks. Among others, Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler provides a sky-cracking distorted bass intro to “The Vanishing”, while Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme taps into the deepest, most incantatory range of his vocals to guide us out of the pained “Snakes for Dinner.” Then there’s the two new Mastodon members: guitarist Nick Johnston and keyboardist João Nogueira. The latter’s textures add creepy and cosmic touches (see the closing breakdown of titanic opener “Barbarians Blood”) and, surprisingly, his solos make for a fantastic, jazz-y addition to the band’s sound, ripping holes in the fabric of tracks like “Your Ghost Again” like a mischievous spirit.
Marrow Deep genuinely feels haunted by Hinds—not just because of its mystical and sorrow-laden mood, but also because there’s an actual hole in the compositional make-up of these 12 tracks. His intricate, banjo-inspired licks are wholly absent from the record, and you immediately take notice. This void further compounds the eerie nature of Marrow Deep, which finds a singular, miraculous sweet-spot between exhilarating and haunted. Long live Brent Hinds, and a round of applause for one of the greatest metal bands of our time, who’ve simultaneously honored his legacy and carved through the murky mire of grief to conjure bold, exciting new directions forward.
