Mastodon

On Lifesblood, their debut EP, Mastodon takes the musical extremity and technical virtuoso of heavyweights Soilent Green, the Dillinger Escape Plan and Today Is The Day and adds their own flavour to the extreme progressive grindcore at hand. Their sound is the result of two years of playing together and a lifetime of random influences, as drummer Brann Dailor explains. "I was schooled on tons of prog rock, Stevie Wonder, Mozart and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Brent [Hinds, guitars] is a really awesome blues player and he can play weird surf tunes and solo all over that stuff, which has a really bizarre sound when mixed with metal." Two members of Mastodon previously played in Today is the Day, and fans of that band will be pleased to find the same tinny and nightmarish vibe in Mastodon. Unsurprisingly, Dailor's drumming steals the show here, essentially giving us one 15-minute long drum fill, with quick bursts of 4/4 time and steady beats thrown in occasionally - the antithesis of rock drummers, much in the same way Mastodon is the antithesis of rock music. "My drumming is cold and Northern and Brent's guitar playing is warm and Southern," offers Dailor on the band's sound. "Brent writes beautiful music, which is a whole new side of playing music to me. I've never been able to take the beauty of music into metal. I've realised in the past couple years that life isn't all negative things. When I was in Today Is The Day, everything was just so negative, but I don't feel that way all the time. I'm a happy guy!" Dailor laughs. Despite the technical wizardry involved, Mastodon's songs have a steady flow to them, Dailor agrees, adding, "I like music to be like water. Water has a lot of different elements to it and can be a lot of different things. Water is a good representation of our music because it can be flat, serene and nice and then it can be raging and storm-like, but it always has a nice flow to it." Out now is a new seven-inch on Reptilian Records and the band's debut full-length will be out on Relapse early next year.