Most fans will have heard Fallen Torches, the album’s sole new recording and a heroic attempt to salvage 2020 via monolithic riffs and an outro thunderous enough to crack planets. It features guest vocals from Neurosis’ Scott Kelly plus a rocket of a chorus sung by multi-talented drummer Brann Dailor, still the only member of Mastodon you could introduce to your mum. Then the hirsute quartet chuck us into A Commotion, one half of an unlikely split single they shared with Canadian indie singer Feist in 2012 (she covered Black Tongue, equally inconceivably). Mastodon inject the relatively spindly original with a sinister punk metal edge that’s off kilter and immediate at the same time.
The band’s cover of A Spoonful Weighs A Ton, originally recorded by alt.rock veterans The Flaming Lips, is another enjoyably weird interpretation. More faithful by far is their note perfect rendition of Orion, created for the Kerrang! tribute album celebrating the 20th anniversary of Metallica's iconic Master Of Puppets back in 2006. That’s a relatively brief aside from the madness, with Atlanta, their batshit crazy collaboration with Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes, riding high among the latter.
Five live tracks are featured, including a 2006 rendition of Circle of Cysquatch, a galloping slice of bonkers, which along with Crystal Skull’s raging metal reminds us to leave expectations in the cloakroom. For the time being, these are nostalgic reminders that each gig this interstellar outfit performed was an exercise in cosmic heaviness, dragging audiences into black holes of power.