Mastodon at the Norva with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Red Fang

After this show, my brother and I have seen Mastodon four times in the course of four years—first when they toured with Slayer after the release of Blood Mountain (my first non-festival concert), then at Mayhem festival, then co-headlining with Deathklok after the release of Crack the Skye, and now headlining on their own with the release of The Hunter. While Blood Mountain was a pretty commercially successful album, I’ve definitely seen Mastodon grow larger as a band in these four years. When they played Mayhem, they were the second band on the main stage before stuff like Dragonforce and Slipknot. Now, they could probably get top or second billing on that tour. I’ve also seen their live shows rise from being “kind of cool” to “totally awesome” post-Crack the Skye.

The Crack the Skye show will probably always be my favorite because that’s my favorite Mastodon album and they played the entire thing, plus five other songs from each of their other albums. For that show, they also got to utilize the LED monitors used in the Dethklok show which made for some trippy and cool atmosphere.

For tonight’s show, Mastodon showcased more of their heavy songs, though also ones that let them flex their technical muscles. That’s exactly what I expected, having seen interviews where they seem intent on striking this balance during live shows—between songs that are fun to play and songs that are fun for the crowd to mosh to. Since first hearing it, I felt like The Hunter was meant as something with a lot of songs that would be fun to play live in this way. I was surprised, though, that they played such a diverse set, with songs from all of their albums. 

They opened with Dry Bone Valley, which seemed like an odd choice as what I find to be a weaker song from The Hunter, but I think that it might’ve been used for sound testing, since it has vocals from all three band members and such. The biggest problem with the older Mastodon shows that I saw was that they had a hard time mixing the sound well, and stuff often came out sounding like a big muddy mess. Dry Bone Valley sounded a bit messy at first, but by the end it sounded right, so I figure something happened there.

Next they ripped into Black Tongue, the proper opener for The Hunter, tailor-made for headbanging and singing along. At this point, it became clear that the crowd was really into it. This was the first Mastodon show I’ve been to where the whole crowd knew the band and knew their lyrics, which was mega-cool with all the yelling and screaming vocals and “whoa-oh” parts on the new album. 

Next was Crystal Skull, which marked the point where I irrevocably lost all my shit. Here’s a song I go crazy singing and thrashing when I listen to it at home, so in concert it’s double the insanity. This was also where I realize just how many cherished memories I have with this band. I started seeing images in my head of my mom and brother and I rocking out to that song at past shows, in the car, etc. We have a tradition of, when we hear the tribal drums at the beginning, yelling “CRYSTAL SKUUUUULL!!!” and doing so at a live show just gives me the warm fuzzies.

From here on it’s a little harder to reconstruct the song order, so I’ll just throw out songs they definitely played.

Sleeping Giant - Thank god they played this song, because it was a much-needed rest in the middle of the constant intensity and mosh pits that were the rest of the show. Plus it’s badass to hear live.

Capillarian Crest - Another one I went insane to, and here’s where I made a big mistake. I’d pointedly stood next to the mosh pit—I didn’t want to go in, because everyone in there was twice my size and drunk as shit, but I figured I’d get bumped around enough on the outer edge. Unfortunately, I didn’t expect my hair would get caught on… something, I have no idea, but I got dragged a few feet by a mosher before coming loose. After that, I thought I’d better get the fuck away from the mosh pit, and even when I did gravitate back to it, my brother put himself between me and the pit saying “I felt like I had to protect you” LOL (this is my little brother). He was having fun being there, though, so it was cool.

Circle of the Cysquatch - Every time that I’ve seen Mastodon, they played this song, which leads me to believe that it’s their favorite live song. I think the mosh pits were at their most intense for this song.

Colony of Birchmen - I’ve never known why Mastodon likes playing this song live, because it never sounds right. The bass always completely overpowers the guitar and it sounds muddy. This has been true of every time I’ve seen it, including on Letterman.

Ghost of Karelia - My least favorite song from Crack the Skye, and it sort of calmed the audience down a bit, but it’s still pretty cool because the song has a lot of good technical showmanship for the guitarists.

Crack the Skye - What made this song awesome was how everyone in the crowd knew the lyrics and sang along. It has pretty powerful vocals (originally performed by Scott Kelly of Neurosis) and they sounded a lot better here than even on the Crack the Skye tour.

Curl of the Burl - So much fun. Again, the “whoa-oh”s are really what made this cool.

Blasteroid - This song was custom-built for losing your shit hearing it live, and boy did the crowd ever. I think my brother deliberately put himself closer to the mosh pit for this song (which is his favorite by Mastodon). 

All the Heavy Lifting - Pretty cool, I’m not a big fan of the song, but it’s another one with loud and passionate vocals that the crowd was into.

Spectrelight - INTENSE.

Bedazzled Fignernails - I think this was one of the weaker songs on the set, because it’s mostly technical wankery that isn’t all that fun to listen to. However, it did make me suddenly start thinking about Dark Souls, since my brother and I listened to this album a lot while playing that game.

Blood and Thunder - They played this last before the encore, and my brother and I went arm-on-shoulder-fists-in-air retarded for it. This song means a lot to us and our friends. We’ve used it in various videos that we made, would break into it at random amongst friends and sometimes just blast it and go nuts for fun. I even remember a time where I had to walk home from school in the rain and was so tired and soaked that I started screaming the lyrics while walking down the street. I remember when I heard it at that Slayer show and nearly threw myself off the second-floor balcony. Every time I see it live, it’s just got that many more memories attached to it.

I Am Ahab - To be honest, I sometimes have difficulty telling the songs on Leviathan all apart since it’s basically an odyssey of heavy riffs, but I can cetainly say that I was going nuts through all of them.

Iron Tusk - See above.

Megalodon - Particularly legendary to see live because of a famous moment where the guitar goes solo for a twangy country bit and then the song launches into complete insanity. Always gets a great response.

Aqua Dementia - This is one of the hardest Mastodon songs to go nuts to. Here’s where I’ll mention another Mastodon tradition of mine—I tend to try and headbang to the beats that come in weird time signatures exactingly, which is something very difficult for this song and Circle of the Cysquatch, but so much fun.

Where Strides The Behemoth - This was the one song I completely didn’t recognize during the show and had to look it up. I’ve barely listened to Remission at all, but I’m usually prepared for them to play some old stuff.

March of the Fire Ants - Such as this, which I know because it’s another song that they play at almost every show, being a classic fan favorite.

Creature Lives - It was a pleasant surprise to see this as the encore, not only because it’s my favorite song from The Hunter, but because they did it in the most epic way possible. All the dudes from Red Fang, a bunch of roadies, and some guys from Dillinger Escape Plan came out on stage and assisted with the highly vocals-driven song, and it was beautiful. 

After the show, my brother noted how this was the first time the band had taken time during and after the show to speak to the crowd, having simply come out and played their songs other times. Indeed, it was the most fun I’d seen this band have to date. I remember when we saw them at Mayhem, the’d seemed irritated to be playing with the shitty stadium sound system and a crowd who didn’t give a shit. Here, it was energy on stage, energy in the crowd, and a great show.

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As for the Dillinger Escape Plan—I was kind of excited to see them and was disappointed. I knew they weren’t going to play any songs that I like by them, since I most like the really old stuff, especially when they had Mike Patton singing. (They did finish with 48% Burnt though which was cool. “I SMELL THAT WHORE!” was the only vocal I knew in the show LOL). Still, DEP are famous for their high-intensity performances, wherein their always-chaotic sound crosses with everyone on stage going ballistic. These things did happen.

Thing is, the guys in DEP seem like a bunch of douchebags; and I’m not just saying that because the singer and guitarist were goddamn penis-shaped giants. Both of them looked like Gears of War characters. Everyone in the band seemed angry and kind of unhappy to be there. And I can’t blame them—the crowd was unresponsive, if not worse. I noticed a lot of people flat-out left the floor during their set. As in, a good deal of people got sick of watching and just walked away. I’ve never seen this happen to such an extent in the middle of a band playing. There were maybe five guys in the crowd who seemed into it. There was a sizable mosh pit, but those guys didn’t give a shit about the band—they were still moshing when the band left the stage. 

Some parts of the performance were surreal. During one song, the lead singer put one leg up on a front amp, help the microphone directly to his mouth, and twitched his left fingers while shifting his weight up and down, staring straight forward, and stayed that way throughout the entirety of the song. He only did a few things different, such as at one point removing his hand to reveal that the microphone was in his mouth. Another time, he sprayed his spit over the audience, which I just thought was a totally dick move.

One can have no doubt about their energy, though. The singer spent a lot of the first song pissed because the sound guy didn’t seem to understand that his screams were supposed to be Really Fucking Loud, which took a couple of minutes to sort out. He and the guitarists were going nuts, climbing and jumping off of amps, brutalizing their guitars, etc. At one point, the lead guitarist started swinging his guitar around his arm, which made me think, this guy has the strongest guitar strap in the universe. The drummer hilariously had a sparkly, blue, cheap-looking kit with very few parts in spite of his fast and technical drumming. I figured that this was probably because he and the guitarist were beating up the cymbals at the end, so maybe they burn through drum kits with all the violence. 

All in all, I didn’t care for this set.

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Red Fang is a band I’d never heard of, but they seemed like pretty cool dudes. They played a sort of sludgy, doomy traditional heavy metal (metallum calls them “stoner metal” but I find that umbrella too broad). They liked playing with times and had some cool bits. I got some Goatsnake vibes from them, though nowhere near that quality. 

Something I found funny was that they were from Portland. I was totally thinking that with their being old dudes with long beards/hair, playing sludge metal and touring with Mastodon (who are from Georgia), plus having a southernish twang to the vocals, they’d be Southern boys. The only thing that tipped me off was the singer’s hipster glasses. 

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Anyway that was a cool and fun show, but it taught me that yeah, I need to start wearing earplugs and calm the fuck down before I break myself. I shouldn’t leave a show in this much pain lol.