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Archive for Mastodon
Mastodon Guitarist Brent Hinds’ Top 10 Freakouts
Posted in Lists, Videos with tags Brent Hinds, Mastodon on 11/10/2025 by Kurt OrzeckArcadea’s ‘The Exodus of Gravity’: Two Cent Review
Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags Arcadea's 'The Exodus of Gravity': Two Cent Review, Brann Dailor, Mastodon on 09/26/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Billed as “a futuristic synth-rock odyssey set five billion years in the future, in a world where gravity no longer holds us down — literally or metaphorically — but pulsing with the urgency of now,” Arcadea set the bar a little too high with The Exodus of Gravity. It would seem that the band put more thought into the conceptual sci-fi story they concocted, which alone isn’t enough to buoy the record. Read my Treble review.
RIP Brent Hinds of Mastodon (and, for a Fleeting Moment, ‘Game of Thrones’
Posted in News with tags Brent Hinds, Game of Thrones, Mastodon on 08/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Pyramid Mass Reveal Influences Behind Their Sick New EP
Posted in Interviews, Lists with tags Colin Marston, Gravesend, Hella, Isis, Mastodon, Mortiferum, Plebeian Grandstand, Pyramid Mass, Robert Fripp, The Police on 03/25/2025 by Kurt Orzeck
Earlier this month, Richmond, Virginia’s Pyramid Mass dipped a ladle into their cauldron of blackened sludge, progressive metal, thrash, black metal, hardcore, avant-garde—Jesus, need we go on?—and poured a heaping helping of their lethal stew into a bowl beautifully named Gargling Rot. The wretched EP, issued by Ossien Records, contains five songs that would make for great house music in Guantánamo Bay. In other words, it’s killer.
Mastered by the legendary James Plotkin of Khanate, Gargling Rot is the chaser to 2023’s Monolith, the debut by the band consisting of Matt Wild (drums/vocals), Nick Crider (guitar/vocals) and Joey Anderson (bass/vocals/synth). The EP commands strict attention from start to finish, even though no matter how hard you concentrate on what Pyramid Mass are doing, you won’t be able to make sense of it. What better way to guarantee repeat spins of a record.
Continue readingPJ Harvey, Sonic Youth, Mastodon, Lil Nas X, Orville Peck: Wacky Merch
Posted in Features, Mementos with tags Lil Nas X, Mastodon, Orville Peck, PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth on 01/11/2024 by Kurt Orzeck
Band patches, stickers and pins are so yesteryear. Check out artist merchandise running the gamut from the hilarious to the bizarre in my latest FLOOD feature.
Doppelgängers: Mastodon and Metallica
Posted in Doppelgängers, Features with tags Mastodon, Metallica on 02/17/2023 by Kurt Orzeck
Metallica, the biggest metal band ever; and Mastodon, one of the best metal bands of this century, share a lot in common.
For starters, Mastodon started publicly crediting Metallica as major influence shortly after the Atlanta crew became a band in 2000. Six years later, Mastodon covered Metallica’s instrumental classic “Orion” for a tribute album tied to the 20th anniversary celebration of Metallica’s Master of Puppets.
James, Lars and the gang returned the favor a couple of years after that. The thrash gods gave the Atlanta sludge-rockers a huge break by crowning them as the openers for two of Metallica’s European tours. For good measure, 2009’s Guitar Hero: Metallica featured Mastodon’s “Blood and Thunder” as one of its playable tracks.
But the common bonds don’t stop there. There’s a truly uncanny coincidence in two songs by the metal bands, both of which deserve to sit on the Iron Throne. The numbers will be familiar to fans: “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” from Metallica’s best (or second-best) record, 1986’s Master of Puppets; and “Megalodon,” a gem of a track from Mastodon’s breakthrough record, 2004’s Leviathan.
Continue readingASG: Psycho Las Vegas Preview
Posted in Interviews with tags ASG, High on Fire, Mastodon, Psycho Las Vegas on 07/30/2022 by Kurt Orzeck
If you’re a) Going to Psycho Las Vegas 2022; b) Wanna witness a guaranteed, badass rock and roll set; and c) Need to bathe yourself in melodious singing after too many hours of screaming vocals … well, make it a point to see ASG on Sunday (August 21).
Hailing from Wilmington, North Carolina, the lovable-but-lethal Psycho vets deliver about as reliably righteous a show as they come. Thanks to tautly written songs that drill into the brain like the Bugs in Starship Troopers, the Relapse Records band never disappoints.
That’s not to say ASG haven’t faced their fair share of hardships, however. The Bad Penny caught up with frontman Jason Shi on Thursday, and he opened up about some of them. Oh, and his love of Blind Melon, too.
Continue readingBest Albums Of 2017: War On Drugs, Queens Of The Stone Age
Posted in Lists, Sound Off with tags Cannibal Corpse, cloud nothings, Mastodon, Ne Obliviscaris, Oneohtrix Point Never, Pallbearer, Power Trip, Queens of the Stone Age, War On Drugs, Woe on 06/10/2018 by Kurt Orzeck
1. War on Drugs – A Deeper Understanding (Atlantic)
2. Queens of the Stone Age – Villains (Matador) Continue reading
The Violent Sleep Of Reason Episode 5, 4.19.17
Posted in MP3s, The Violent Sleep of Reason with tags All Hell, Coltsblood, Dragonforce, Enterprise Earth, Epi-Demic, Hellwell, Karma to Burn, Katakomb, Loathe, Mastodon, Nathorg, Naudiz, Necrowretch, Nightbringer, Novembers Doom, Oceans Are Zeroes, Pyriphlegethon, Rotting Christ, Shores of Null, Suffocation, Tombs, Varg on 04/29/2017 by Kurt Orzeck
Varg’s Götterdämmerung album cover
The Bad Penny’s new program through Radio Free America, “The Violent Sleep of Reason,” focuses on new and upcoming heavy-metal releases. The show’s fifth installment featured new cuts by Varg, Necrowretch, All Hell, Tombs, Suffocation and Coltsblood.
The Bad Penny (beta) 