The beauty of metal, to me, is how it seems to suggest music as a form of sculpture. The contour of distorted guitar lends itself to tactile shape, and sharp-relief shape at that. The best metal artists seem to possess this sense for sonic shape. Mastodon produce very convoluted and varied shapes, which is part of the appeal to synaesthetes like me.

Post-thrash metal famously covets the musical seriousness of classical forms, but this can feel like an empty pretense when artists import these qualities crudely or clumsily from elsewhere; it often seems incompletely felt, or done for sheer reference's sake. Mastodon, on the other hand, expand on musical topics that are actually peculiar to the metal genre -- for example, in-depth exploration of unstable modes, like Locrian. They aren't the only band to do this, but it ensures the kind of musical pretention they aspire to is one they can legitimately lay claim.

My problem with Mastodon, if anything, is that they're too interesting. They're relentlessly interesting, particularly the drummer; it's as though he thinks anything less complex than a clatter of 32nd note beats is phoning it in. That gets tiring for me. But it feels churlish to complain too much, because while I love the sound of metal, in practice very little of it satisfies me aesthetically; I feel like I ought to be grateful for what I can get (and Melville is a fantastic source for a concept record).