Really interesting song. I dont ever listen to lyrics when I hear music, and given that im so in love with well developed and produced output on the 6 strings, i rarely even hear vocals in music. So when I say “interesting song,” im not talking about the lyrics. Anyways, the harmonics on this track, prime example at 2:30, has this really cool contemporary-midievil feel to it. It seems to me that in the 80s “neo-classical” was all the rage in heavy metal. Now (now being, lets say, late 90s untill present) im hearing so much “neo-midieval” that im wondering if it can be a difinitive attribute in the chonological characterization of metal music. Its not just in doom bands like the here-presented Mastodon (pretty slick website), I hear it all across the doom band roll call, and even moreso in black metal.
Anyways, this track has all these groovy little “neo-midieval” interludes that accomplish a lot of cool patternization and emotional discharge over an interval of maybe a second (typical characteristic across all metal music). 2:38 is an example of this, and repeated again at 2:48 at higher key. Then the “bridger-lude” immediately after does a great job of sorta recapturing and summarizing the emotional force emitted from this track. The initial interlude at 1:15 marks the beginning of these really cool harmonic effects. Hearing the bass and both rhythm guitars flow in and over each other, harmonizing on the same base melody is really cool. Its got the basic heavy metal punch but accomplishes it in this elegant, gentle, uplifting manner.
Mastodon is a great band. I really judged them and kinda disregarded them as “just anodda doom band” when I first heard them, but listening to Leviathan a lot while cleaning house lately has changed my opinion. Clutch cd.