Mastodon: The Hunter Review

There are many ways by which I discover new music. There are blogs, magazine reviews — but my absolute preferred way to discover new music is through the recommendations of my friends. For the most part the recommendations are spot on and I completely love the albums. Sometimes I don’t care for the music too much. In the case of the new album by Mastodon, Hunter, I am still not entirely sure about how I feel about the album despite listening to it a number of times.

Honestly, if it hadn’t been recommended by a friend of mine, I really doubt I would have listened to it all the way through. I am not generally a fan of heavy metal music and do not go out of my way to seek it.

When listening to this album the first time, I had a difficult time distinguishing one track from the next — perhaps because of the tone of the music or the singing style. There are some styles of heavy metal singing that are more pleasant to the ear than others — I have heard some singing that is quite confrontational — like the music of Blöödhag, which is difficult to understand because the lead singer wants people to read their lyrics.

Despite not being able to distinguish the tracks so well — I still have a hard time doing so — I actually found myself enjoying the album as a whole. I didn’t understand what the singer was singing in any of the songs and when I looked for them online, I wished that I hadn’t.

Splinters in my skin just like needles and pins
I cut through the pine, love the feeling it gives
But I’ll never die, running through these streets
I’m using my hands, cutting through the disease

Now that I know what the singer is singing, I wish that I didn’t know. I read through some of the lyrics and honestly don’t care for too many of them. At the same time I feel like I can move past it and continue to enjoy the album on the basis of the music alone. Having established that, I doubt that I would invest more time into other albums by Mastodon.