Ten years ago I walked into a local music store and browsed through ”New arrivals” section, looking for something new and exciting. Cover of Mastodon’s Remission caught my eye and I decided to hear few songs off it in the store (this in the time and age before Spotify and YouTube). I liked what I’ve heard and decided to by the CD. Music on the debut blew me away and despite the fact that I have never been fan of growling or singing on first couple of records, I was hooked on this Atlanta band.

Some years later, with release of Crack The Skye the band created one of the best albums of 2009 and raised the bar immensely. Since than band has been frequent guest in Denmark but for the most part as supporting band to the likes of Metallica and Slayer or visiting Roskilde Festival almost regularly. But it has been a while since the band played their headlining show here in Denmark. The fact that the band’s latest release The Hunter, not only lived up to high expectations, but also turned out to be one of the best releases last year, made this evening even more thrilling.

Vega’s big venue was almost sold out and the band took the stage at precisely 9:15 PM. They opened with “Dry Bone Valley”, which on paper seemed as somewhat odd opener, but live it worked very well nonetheless because of the fabulous interplay between riffs and melody. They followed it with another new song, an instant live classic “Black Tounge”. The sound was crunchy and dirty, yet quite clear.

The band sounded fired up, but up on stage they didn’t project much energy and surplus.
Mastodon have that stoner rock feel to their stage presence and even more so this evening. The only band member who was trying to create some kind of communication was Troy Sanders who did work the stage well, but his contact with the crowd was not only limited by also of that preconceived sort.
Guitarists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher were very distanced, but their playing was just eminent. The same goes for Brann Dailor behind his Randy Rhoads? drumkit was simply extraordinary.
The overall interplay between the band members further strengthened the fantastic songwriting and arrangements of the songs.

The lack of communication from the band affected the crowd who didn't get as engaged as they should have. Sure the complexity of the music and nonetheless rhythmical structure makes it hard to get the typical “Enter Sandman”-response from the crowd, but still more connection from the stage would most definitely result in more crowd response.

Talking about the crowd it was impressive to see their response to new songs. It's a strong statement of a current state of a band, when crowd responses so well to the songs. “Curl of the Burl”, “All the Heavy Lifting” and “Black Tongue” got the classic-song response from the crowd and their melodic nature made everyone sing.
Not surprisingly the setlist included lots of new songs, whole nine songs to be exact. That's only four songs short of the entire The Hunter album. Thanks to the quality of the new material and the positive response from the crowd this was a very positive aspect of the show. On the other hand, whole five songs from band's by far weakest album Blood Mountain. They did pick the songs well, but the album did feel overrepresented, nonetheless because it went over couple of the strongest Mastodon records – Crack The Skye and Remission.
First of the two was probably neglected because on previous few Danish gigs the album was highly represented. On a personal note I greatly missed “The Czar” and “Crusher Destroyer” (later of two should be a live-must) as well as few more quieter psychedelic tunes.

The band closed the set with the weakest son off the new album, “Creature Lives” with members of supporting band's members delivering the vocals. Song worked better live then on the album, but the whole sing-along approach felt too rehearsed even thou the intent with placing this song at the end of the set was very different.

Mastodon's music is a musical challenge and live all the elements of this band's music become ever more extensive and even more challenging and it gives the music a new twist, even a new aspects. After seeing the band live numerous times, experiencing their technical abilities lives is always a jaw-dropping experience. What makes the experience even better is that the material the band plays is very well written and it never feels like just display of technical abilities.
However for some reason the band still lacks something live. It's as if they have hard time managing to do them fully justice live, not playing wise, but delivering wise.
Oddly the misplaced show on Roskilde Festival's biggest stage in the broad daylight last year, still remains my best live encounter with the band.
[4/6]

SETLIST:
01 - Dry Bone Valley
02 - Black Tongue
03 - Crystal Skull
04 - I Am Ahab
05 - Capillarian Crest
06 - Colony of Birchmen
07 - Megalodon
08 - Thickening
09 - Blasteroid
10 - Sleeping Giant
11 - Ghost of Karelia
12 - All the Heavy Lifting
13 - Spectrelight
14 - Curl of the Burl
15 - Bedazzled Fingernails
16 - Circle of Cysquatch
17 - Aqua Dementia
18 - Crack the Skye
19 - Where Strides the Behemoth
20 - Iron Tusk
21 - March of the Fire Ants
22 - Blood and Thunder
23 - Creature Lives