In literature and music alike, there are the artists that get their dues then-and-there, while others fly under the fame until reflection deems them masters of their craft. Alas it was for poor Herman Melville that he’d never be able to reach his hundredth year to see Moby Dick become the pinnacle of Great American Novels. Mastodon, though, were lucky to reach what their guiding voice could not so early on. They were granted an air of untouchability on the metal stage in 2004, that didn’t even have them jostling with bands that featured DJs, ironically emerging from their own Pequodian mission with a victory lap: they’d written the next Great American Metal Epic.
This grand intention for the now-landmark Leviathan (which just celebrated its two-decade anniversary) was always clear from the start. In a roundabout way. In a phone call interview before the album’s wrapping, drummer Brann Dailor described his own fascination with reading Melville’s opus on tour, severely underplaying their grandiose mission: “I thought it would be really, really cool, and I kinda used Mad Ahab as us being obsessed with, you know, playing music and potentially going down with the whale or whatever, you know what I mean?”
Dailor’s casual tone aside (described in that same interview as sounding like “a man who is permanently stoned”), the resulting product sounded far from having descended under the weight of the band’s own expectation, or threatened by whale-blubber bucket loads of weed. Instead, it’s a remarkable testament to their obsession with esoteric folklore and psychedelic takes on life’s big questions.
Evidently, it’s an easy slip to bombard the ever-growing Leviathan discourse with watery features—I do apologize—but it feels so intrinsically tied to Mastodon’s history that it’s right to not be ignored. Whether you call Mastodon sludge, stoner, or prog metal, they’re all irrelevant in the grand scheme of their thematic album focus. At the start of the century where metal radio-play was still commonplace, Mastodon was an anomaly in beginning a quadrilogy of albums conceptually tied to the elements which wouldn’t be completed until 2009. Debut record Remission—”the fire one”—ignited its audience with beefy plodding tones and flaming marching ants, yet only hinted at being a spark for far more sophisticated ideas.
So then did their land-based Mastodon form evolve to take on the wider mystery of the ocean as the Leviathan, something that on paper sounds far more contrived and gimmicky than its outrageous execution. That’s even more amazing to think given the Atlanta quartet’s knockabout manner; even the gall of attempting to part-recreate the world’s most cherished seafaring novel to avoid a sophomore slump is so bafflingly difficult it leans on being extremely funny. But away from the playful, a lot of Leviathan’s success is the sheer seriousness in its actual playing. Paul Romano’s compelling artwork is just the door to the Mastodon myth that unravels, a pure treasure trove of intricate riffs, pure power, evocative poetry and, well, more riffs.
Any fans that have ever discovered the quartet will know the sheer magic in the hands of Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher. I myself first saw the moustached duo posing with some Gibsons in Guitar World magazine, tattoo shop dudes acting as foil to the brandished ethereal cover of Crack the Skye that was released at the time. Around then, I’d also been introduced to the cataclysmic “Mother Puncher” intro by my main metalhead friend at the time. My tiny brain couldn’t comprehend any of this back then, nor can my (apparently) fully formed adult one make out how they ever contrived the weaving course of Leviathan to this day. To be clear, this album is somehow no sort of riff salad. Each drum roll complements the flowing, crunching tones that can be as mystical as they are levelling. With Hinds’ banjo background, the finger picking styles and oodles of open notes carry mystery everywhere they appear (the alluring “Seabeast” or the jittery “Aqua Dementia”). Every guitar taken in isolation remains the gnarliest or most unique passage you’ve ever heard, even here in 2024.
Not much can ever top an album introduction by way of musical impact and thematic scene-setting than “Blood and Thunder.” If you know, you know: the sliding chords, Dailor’s fill, the frenzied scream of the albino whale, and its epic opening line: “I think that someone is trying to kill me!” It’s chilling and mosh-worthy in equal measure, never letting up in its mimicry of a brewing storm that will come to define the swashbuckling terror adventure to come. Even having come to reading Moby Dick after listening to Leviathan for many years, and for all the expert descriptions of the tyrannical captain, any mention of his presence instead evoked Clutch vocalist Neil Fallon’s Ahabian cry of “Split your lungs with blood and thunder, when you see the white whale! Break your backs and crack your oars men! If you wish to prevail!” Its near-Biblical impact is more than the band and Fallon would have you believe; they even portrayed circus performers at some sort of drunken vaudeville party for its music video. It goes back to the band as a gang of knockabout jokers, I guess.
All of this may outline why “Blood and Thunder” is the quintessential Mastodon song, but it is no less one cut of a whole that’s endlessly beguiling. You get seismic punk-like rushes in “I Am Ahab” or the Monsters University needle drop “Island” (they were surely proud of that inclusion). “Iron Tusk” takes the low-string “Mother Puncher” formula and drags it another notch down to stankface territory. “Megalodon” segues from tinkling tension builder to bluegrass interlude to a milked-to-death low string rip-roarer, which could play on forever as far as I’m concerned. Likewise, “Hearts Alive” showcased the band’s preternatural ability at writing centerpiece epics that would resurface all across Crack the Skye’s more proggy inclinations. Its segue of instrumentals is delectable, each section building on a general “where did they come up with that?” idea. The closer “Joseph Merrick”—strangely calling back to Remission’s Elephant Man theme—ends proceedings with a sense of unease, a hypnotizing sea shanty as if played by a Nantucket sailor on the brink of death, having heard the Reaper’s call from across the Antarctic.
Coming to this Mastodon record feels like finally arriving to discover that thing that’s the best of its kind. Like the Great American Novel, it may at this point be the archetype of Southern sludge. And while it does not include the lengthy passages entwined with what constitutes the whale’s whiteness, the purveying of spermaceti, or layered metaphysical scope so grand that it ignites something intangibly profound, it will find you in the end, you will listen, and you will be moved.
And that’s lucky; for many, myself included, Leviathan’s timelessness way back in the noughties has only become more obvious. It’s a document that needs a mention in the “dream metal album” dinner party conversation—you can have Paranoid, you could have Seasons in the Abyss, but Leviathan is a true example of the greatest feats an album of the scene can reach. Forgetting the Shakespeare allusions and god complexes, that is exactly the sort of gravitas Melville expected, right?
Mastodon : Leviathan
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