Metal Underground.com

Three opuses in, Mastodon have dealt us concept albums on Fire (“Remission”), Water (“Leviathan”) and now one on Earth. There’s no reason not to believe they'll complete this elemental quartet with a disc about Wind. At that point, certain dubious prophesies in obscure Yes liner-notes will be validated; the visionary mercenaries named Mastodon will battle in the sky with sundry astral dragons and winged minotaurs, the guardians of a treasure trove reserved for those who lift prog to its final apotheosis. You heard it here first.

Rock? Blood Mountain deals with a spiritual journey up some monstrous, unhallowed stone, as is illustrated by the lyrics "We will climb to bestow our trust." Mastodon plays without irony and composes without cheese as we encounter lyrical themes to make the most hardened dungeon master drool: psionic one-eyed sasquatches and man-sized moths that soar on wings of broken glass. Riding “Blood Mountain’s” ornate rippling polyrhythm, their music rings brutal, pure and strange, but never lacks an off-kilter sense of mirth at the impossible places it finds.

And it moves. The groove here digs deeper than their tidal “Leviathan,” and its southern-rock inflections are now utterly buried by the throbbing aura of doom metal. Like Meshuggah, they found their compositions on simple, repetitive riffs that slowly unfold into dizzying rhythmic space. Unlike their Swedish math-death brethren, they write vocal hooks, which take the forefront on most of these twelve songs. Mastodon has never compromised anything, but there's enough melody here to draw in your seventh-grade sister. Forty minutes later and she’ll be breaking Drowningpool albums over her knee.

Even the sparse solos demonstrate a dense, expressive melodic sense, and stay integral to each song's structure. Blood Mountain's virtuosity is always and only necessary. Mastodon uses their talent to demonstrate their vision, and not the reverse. This is a tempered prog-rock, lacking the showing-off that so often keeps prog pasty and hollow. It's the sound of ground breaking.