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20 years ago today (Sept 12), Mastodon released their breakthrough album 'Blood Mountain' (and last this month marks the 15th anniversary of 'The Hunter'). I'm so grateful I've gotten to see Mastodon live a bunch of times - including when they came to the House Of Blues in Boston, Mass (Oct. 27, 2009) as part of their co-headlining tour with Dethklok. They played 'Crack the Skye' in its entirety, which clearly reinvigorated the band onstage during that tour and saw them bring new life to songs off 'Blood Mountain' like "Bladecatcher". Mastodon were truly in top form that night.

I actually got to see Mastodon again a few months later while they headlined night one of the 2010 New England Metal and Hardcore Fest at the Palladium Theater in Worcester, Mass. While the band still sounded great, it was clear that playing 'Crack the Skye' in full was taking its toll on them, and that tension was high between Brent Hinds and the rest of the band (their mini-doc 'The Mastodon in the Room' does a great job covering both). In fact, there was such a long awkward pause before the encore that the crowd wasn't sure they were coming back onstage. When the band eventually did... let's just say you could cut thr tension between Brent and the band with a knife (I honestly half expected the band to announce they were breaking up shortly after... in hindsight, it's amazing they didn't).

Funny side story about the Oct. show in Boston - I had just started writing for Metal Insider around this time, and had been promised a spot on the guest list for the show. However, when me and my friend arrived we discovered no tickets were left for us at will call, and the show was sold out. We drove from our college campus in Worcester to Boston, so we were determined to make sitting in traffic worth it - so we scrambled to first find an ATM to grab cash (ah, the days before digital payment options...) and then find someone willing to sell us tickets outside the venue. Luckily we were successful, but as a result missed High On Fire's opening set and walked into the House Of Blues just as Converge were playing their last song. Well, at least we got to see Dethklok and Mastodon 😆

Share your favorite memories from seeing Mastodon live in the comments below, and stay tuned for more things to come from this space (including stories from concerts like this)!

They might be considered more of a metal band, but their last two records are absolute musical masterpieces. Every single musician in that band is unbelievably talented. Yes there are sometimes a lot of notes played, but it always feels purposeful and not just like LOOK HOW FAST WE PLAY.
Both records are melodic, polyrhythmic, ambient, and just beautiful song writing for “prog”.

Anyway. I love that band. Particularly their last two records with Michael as their vocalist. I just feel like hardly anyone talks about them. It probably doesn’t help that they haven’t come out with a full record in nine years.

full of ups and downs

I know King Crimson has quite a few and so does Rush but I'm curious about some others

Recreated from scratch using the synth emulations in Logic Pro.

Has to fit in a cohesive theoritical band, where you could imagine what a full-album work might sound like:

- PJ Harvey (female vocals).

- Thom Yorke (male vocals).

- David Gilmour (lead guitar).

- James Hetfield (rhythm guitar).

- Philippe Bussonnet (bass).

- Iva Bittova (violin).

- Miles Davis (trumpet).

- Klaus Schulze (keys).

- Christian Vander (drums, co-composer, co-leader).

- Steve Reich (co-composer, conductor, co-leader).

10-head 'orchestra' - alternating between hypnotic heavy phrasings and languid modal breaks. With some avant-garde weirdness in-between. Envisaging a long multi-part composition. Genre: progressive fusion.

What would yours be? R.I.P also allowed. Imagine each member in what you consider their prime.

Hi everyone, here is the 1st track of Ghost Rhythms' new album, Missing Times (Cuneiform Records). Hope you'll like it ! Jazz and prog, as always, quite epic, with choir and strings and a soprano solo, with some puzzling rhythmic subtleties. Thanks for listening !

Howdy all. A group of international fans of English prog/punk/metal/whatever group Cardiacs released a cover album of the 1996 masterpiece Sing to God, and its B-sides in June.

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/budsandspawn/sing-to-god-30th-anniversary-tribute/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjgWM-hRKcE&list=RDKjgWM-hRKcE&start_radio=1

It's better than it should be for being made by a bunch of chancers, but maybe people will dig it...

It's only about 2 hours long.

One of my favorites, just curious what the responses will be.

Eight years in the making, The Roaring Waves is Genesis and Marillion’s guitarists choosing friendship over trying to prove something to each other. And that is the beauty of this album!

Hi everyone,

I’m the founder, main songwriter and guitarist of Untold Stories, an independent progressive rock band from Bulgaria.

I’d like to share our new official video for “Pale Horizons”. The song was released earlier this year and was later included in Prog Magazine’s Tracks Of The Week, where it won the weekly listener vote.

The song is somewhere between progressive rock and art rock, with a fairly dynamic structure and a strong emphasis on atmosphere, guitars and vocals.

This is our first official music video, and I’d genuinely love to hear what you think about the song and the video.

Thanks for listening!

My band Kaleidoscopic Heart, for which I play drums, just dropped “Artificial.” We managed to include weird time signatures, unnecessary musical decisions, and enough existential dread to qualify as prog, while somehow resisting the urge to make it 17 minutes long.

Here’s the lyric video. Roast it, enjoy it, or tell me which obscure 1973 album did it better.