Mastodon - Marrow Deep
It’s been a rough few years for the members of Mastodon. Back in 2018, the band’s longtime friend and manager, Nick John, died of cancer. Then, the pandemic happened, and the band spent months pulling together material for the grief-stricken double album Hushed and Grim, which found the Atlanta metal act working through that sadness. A few years later, after a falling out with the members of his band, longtime guitarist Brent Hinds left. Five months later, he died in a motorcycle accident in Atlanta. Mastodon has had the same lineup for over two decades, and their first without Hinds’ guitar work, Marrow Deep, features the first true metamorphosis for a band that has remained pretty consistent since its inception. Much like Hushed and Grim, Marrow Deep is an album about grief and living with that sadness.
The band has stated that the album’s lead single, “Your Ghost Again”, is a tribute to Hinds, and it’s clear after just one listen of its aching chorus (“I saw your ghost again/Visions of a future non existent/I saw your ghost again/Followed by crushing feelings of regret/All my gifts from you/Take it back where you must go”). But many songs on Marrow Deep seem to be about the loss of Hinds’. The pain is palpable. You can hear it on “Snakes For Dinner” (“When you left you took the moon and stars/Buried them deep underneath the ocean/When you left you took our hearts and minds/All that I could find amongst the grime were memories”), “Out Like A Lamb” (“I feel the essence creeping in/I feel the sorrow/I tried to wrap you in linens/Designed by the lamb/Evil to come rushing in/Came in to turn you to stone”), “In The Ruins” (“The passion and lusts we engaged once touched your soul/Now sadness crashes in relentless waves/We don’t get over this”), and “The Vanishing” (“Will time become my friend?/The more we love suffer/Can we bear the wound that never mends?”).
At this point down the road, you know what to expect from a Mastodon record: the unexpected. The band has always tread the line between progressive rock and heavy metal, not quite Rush but not quite Black Sabbath. They have some of the best musicianship in the genre, and every song on Marrow Deep features crushing riffs, ethereal melodies, and bombastic rhythm sections accentuated only by bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders’ rasp-filled vocal delivery. Add in vocal appearances from Neil Fallon (Clutch), Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Randy Blythe (Lamb of God), a truly epic bass line from Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath), and guest musician spots from Joe Duplantier (Gojira), Nate Newton and Ben Koller (Converge), and you’ve got one hell of an album.
Most of the songs reach lengths of five minutes, and the album is indeed massive in length (much like previous Mastodon records). What’s incredible about Mastodon is their ability to take a subject like grief and turn it into a sprawling epic. They spice it up with dark imagery that accompanies metal music - ghosts, poison, decay, demons - and make it both a personal farewell to their longtime friend and bandmate and a journey to explore the grief that has hitched itself to their backs.
