Mastadon – Leviathan – 2004

Take Herman Melville’s extremely verbose, anti-transcendentalist tale about the whaling ship Peaquad Captain Ahab’s maniacal quest for vengeance against the giant white fish*; a text that is brutal in tone and structure along with its grandiose over-arching plot. Then put that to modern progressive thrash metal written and performed by extremely talented musicians in the genre, and you have an instant and epic classic.

On this album, Mastadon finds a brilliant balance of melodic and thematic content along with the brutal thrash that the genre and subject matter requires.  The album came out in 2004, a time when much of the world of metal was a bit stagnant trying to brush off the stove-pipe jeans era of nu-metal. It’s also a departure from the post-metal genre from bands like Isis, Pelican, and Neurosis whose style’s a bit more long-winded.  With Leviathan, they found a sound outside their sludge-metal begins and showed that melody could live in harmony with complex arrangements and sheer, brutal thrashing. The album has thematic tie lines in each composition that build into an epic adventure. One that lends itself to multiple listens.

While Mastadon has continued to create albums that have broadened the boundaries of progressive metal with Crack The Skye and Emperor of Sand amongst others, it’s this 2004 release that feels like their masterpiece to me.

* – Yup.  Whales were indeed considered fish in the world circa 1851. Melville dedicates at least one whole chapter to the subject of their classification within the scientific world.

AllMusic.com – 4 stars

James Lavelle and DJ Shadow are unequal partners in UNKLE, with the former providing the concept and the latter providing music, which naturally overshadows the concept, since the only clear concept -- apart from futuristic sound effects, video-game samples, and merging trip-hop with rock -- is collaborating with a variety of musicians, from superstars to cult favorites Kool G Rap, Alice Temple, and Mark Hollis (who provides uncredited piano on "Chaos"). Since Shadow's prime gift is for instrumentals, the prospect of him collaborating with vocalists is more intriguing than enticing, and Psyence Fiction is appropriately divided between brilliance and failed experiments. Shadow and Lavelle aren't breaking new territory here -- beneath the harder rock edge, full-fledged songs, and occasional melodicism, the album stays on the course Endtroducing... set. Shadow isn't given room to run wild with his soundscapes, and only a couple of cuts, such as the explosive opener, "Guns Blazing," equal the sonic collages of his debut. Initially, that may be a disappointment, but UNKLE gains momentum on repeated listens. Portions of the record still sound a little awkward -- Mike D's contribution suffers primarily from recycled Hello Nasty rhyme schemes -- yet those moments are overshadowed by Shadow's imagination and unpredictable highlights, such as Temple's chilly "Bloodstain" or Badly Drawn Boy's claustrophobic "Nursery Rhyme," as well as the masterstrokes fronted by Richard Ashcroft (a sweeping, neo-symphonic "Lonely Soul") and Thom Yorke (the moody "Rabbit in Your Headlights"). These moments might not add up to an overpowering record, but in some ways Psyence Fiction is something better -- a superstar project that doesn't play it safe and actually has its share of rich, rewarding music.
AllMusic.com Stephen Thomas Erlewine
wish I knew who drew this crazy comic