| By the album’s second song (“March of the Fire Ants,” whose chorus includes the very outstanding shouted-in-unity chorus line “Bone! Grave!”), it’s clear that Mastodon want to be thought of as Some of the Baddest Guys on the Block, and they buy the respect they want with lots of face-breaking chords and breaks; and the third and fourth songs lean heavy on the bass and bass drums to make sure you know that they’re not kidding, either; but then something kinda weird happens. It’s a song called “Ol’e Nessie,” which, despite the nearly unforgivable clumsiness of its title -- shouldn’t that be “Ol’,” abbreviating “old,” the apostrophe standing in for the missing “d”? -- is the key moment on the album, the one where you know you’re in the presence of something considerably cooler than a bunch of loud-ass songs hustled into the marketplace. It starts out not quietly like a similarly-minded Metallica song might, but somewhere near the middle: quite pretty, but not hey-ma-check-it-out-I-turned-down-the-volume pretty. There are some strange squeaking water noises mingling with a high trebly guitar pattern, and then the bass and the high-hat join in, eventually leading to the whole drum kit, and this goes on... |
