Not all metal consists of fast-paced riffs. Some musicians favor insane progressions, wide ranges of notes and faster than lightning fretwork.
Sometimes, even at a slower pace, artists of the metal genre still provide music that communicates energy.
Mastodon’s Crack the Skye offers songs such as “Quintessence” and “Crack the Skye” where the lyrics, and instruments are well synchronized.
This isn’t to say that the rest of the album is slow and unattractive. But some of the slower songs seem to lack energy and enthusiasm.
They aren’t poorly performed; they just do not seem to invoke much of any thought. “Divinations,” for example, contains many of the elements required to make a song, but not the heart to make it into something great.
Music requires heart and soul to have any real staying power.This is why so many pop songs that many of us hate to admit we ever enjoyed never last longer than a summer as staples of radio station and iPod playlists.
Metal can be just as deep and meaningful as any other genre of music. Take, for example, the song “Inside the Fire,” by Disturbed off their album Indestructible. It relates the story of a man who finds the woman he loves has committed suicide, and is based on actual events in the life of frontman David Draiman.
Mastodon has the technical prowess and musical ability required to produce good metal, but if they ever want to expand beyond relative mediocrity, they should look at putting forth some tracks that evoke real feelings.
The album runs around 50 minutes with only seven tracks on it.
For the number of tracks available, there is decent variety, and only one song is under five minutes.
Still, some of the songs seem to go on for longer than they should.
In this sense, the album seems a little short, as if Mastodon could have added more tracks and therefore more variety.
Crack the Skye isn’t a great album.
Many tracks are worth listening to, but for each good one, another track is only passable.
Most fans of the band will still find most, if not all, of the tracks worth listening to, but those passing through the genre and looking for new music may want to look elsewhere.
Darwin may have argued that species adapt or become extinct, but Mastodon, at the most, can prove to make this theory debatable.
