Tonight sees a first for the city as days after their 12th anniversary, progressive metal giants, Mastodon, come to town.
Kicking the gig off and supporting the tour are Portland super-group label mates, RED FANG. A suiting fit for the bill with their dirty rock, actually reminding me of some early Kyuss with some modern twists and turns on par with Clutch. I always say support the supporting bands, even just to get your monies worth, but Red Fang are a must – especially for the lovers of beards and good rock n’ roll!
Mastodon walked on stage quite modestly to a massive roar from the fans, who actually forced the band to prove themselves; taking a little while to warm into some movement.
Now then, Tours in support of a new album can some times be a bit annoying, playing mostly tracks you don’t know and then the typical overplayed cliché hits, this was not the case for Mastodon. I don’t know how, because although this is exactly what they did but the set pieced together so smoothly. Holding no bars from tracks across a back catalogue of ten years and never a band to shy away from old b-side album tracks, the set list was truly smashing.
Just like a jigsaw, the new tracks slid right into place. Of course, when your set is 100 minutes long it’s easy to fit in a huge selection but surprisingly there were only two tracks played from previous album, Crack The Skye. The set included March Of The Fire Ants, Blood And Thunder, Iron Tusk, Megalodon, Crystal Skull, Sleeping Giant, Capillarian Crest, Colony Of Birchmen, Oblivion and Crack The Skye and what seemed like at least half the new album, The Hunter, with Black Tongue, Curl Of The Burl, Blasteroid, and The Thickening, to name a few and of course, not in that order.
It was great to see the crowd reacting equally as well to the new tracks and singing along loudly and although absent, the lack of talking to the crowd made no difference; the smile’s on the band members said enough in those few seconds between each song.
No messing about with the fake encore pause and awkward talking in between songs is a great recipe, other bands take note; stop messing about and play more songs!
Mastodon kept the momentum thundering all night with their awesome definitive sound and finished off inviting Red Fang back on-stage to sing along to the shanty-like ‘Creature Lives’ and then a few words from drummer, Brann, announcing the confirmation from that day of the bands slot at Copenhell this summer!”
What a gig to start the new year off – and the hairiest night since the Vikings left!
