Review by Sonny for Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)

This was a pretty big thing when it came out twenty-odd years ago and Mastodon were touted all over the metal mags as the next big thing, except that, unlike most of the early 2000s metal press darlings, their music didn't suck. They took the abrasive anger and aggression of sludge metal and steerred it in a progressive direction, which gave it a much more technical edge. At this stage, this isn't fully blown progressive metal, it is still identifiably sludge metal with a guitar sound well familiar to fans of bands like Crowbar and the angry, shouted, hardcore-derived vocals we are used to. Yet, I am fairly sure, that sludge metal concept albums were fairly rare, unless they were about the misery and desperation of a life of drug addiction and poverty, certainly I can't recall any that were based on classic literature such as Herman Melville's Moby Dick, which is exactly what Leviathan is. Sum total is an intelligent, technically proficient, muscular and aggressive-sounding, remarkably ambitiously-written entry into sludge metal history that ultimately heralded in a new era for the genre, but which has rarely been bettered.