Psychedelimetallurgy

Chris and Sean both knew that the Monarch and the Barfly are not the same place, so I pitched up late for our date with the makers of "Aqua Dementia". I'd been in a place peopled by Camden punks, paunchy industro-goth survivors, but smelling of furniture cleansing and new leather. "Indie rock smells better than it did in '94" I texted to Chris. "You're in the wrong pub", he replied.

Pithy to the max, as always.

I struggled to take nu metal seriously. If there's one thing that kills the necessary fantasy stone dead, it's self-regarding, histrionic moralising. The acting-out of autistic fantasies of Tolkeinish adventure or pseudo-sci-fi rebellion is very tedious as long as you don't need your fantasies shouted at you. So there needs to be a pretty brutal distancing and reimagining of the position of the metal sound to break free of the cliched dream.

And somehow, Mastodon manage this. Their sound seethes and roils like an invertebrate. The vocal is reduced to a purely rhythmic device. It's properly psychedelic, constantly altering and rolling over itself without anything as crass as doing the same thing twice.