That sweet assed camera phone pic on the left is from Mastodon last night at Roseland.
Although the experience wasn't as hot as the last time I was there, it was a pretty amazing show.
Mastodon is a band right after my own heart. They came out, didn't address the audience, and did a straight one hour balls out set and left the stage with no encore. The perfect amount of rock time! No overstaying their welcome, no filler, no muss nor fuss. Just a whole lot of rock.
The bill was weird. We decided to straight up miss Cursive, which was fine with me. I wasn't exactly blown away the last time I saw them. We thought by getting to the venue around 9 we would have circumvented the opening acts. Unfortunately this wasn't the case and Against Me! went on as soon as we walked in. I can only describe them as the type of music MTV would be playing if MTV still showed videos. They looked SoCal punk, sounded poppy and dark, and made use of post-punk disco beats. We hung out in the "secret bar" behind the stage where mercifully you can barely hear the bands and waited all the nonsense out. This band had really young crowd surfing fans, many of whom left before Mastodon. All the better!
Mastodon definitely does not have a Metal audience. The divide between METAL and indie-metal is still pretty vast. I saw that kid who lives in my neighborhood and plays trombone in some indie band and knows my cousin outside smoking a cigarette. Everyone had short hair and could have just as easily been at a Rocket from the Crypt or Arcade Fire gig. I felt like the odd man out. Even the KIDS weren't as Metal as they were at Dimmu Borgir. Where were the mis-guided 15 year old virgins wearing corpse paint?? Either way, Mastodon rocked. By the end of Blood and Thunder I was completely drained. And they played Circle Sysquatch!!!
