The first vocalist you hear - the rougher one, is the vocalist from Neurosis! He has appeared as a guest vocalist on all of Mastodon's full length albums since their second album called Leviathan.
@@maaaaaap think Brann said because if covid stuff and schedule stuff. He was in fallen torches which came out last year tho. Feel like that might’ve been for the album and then they instead decided to release it with the medium rarities collection.
The harsh vocals are Scott Kelly from Neurosis who is good friends with Brann and the rest of the band. If you watch the making of Crack the Skye documentary on the Mastodon channel they talk about him being on the song and what it meant to him.
I have to say one of the things i love most about your channel is you appreciate songs as a entire piece and composition and THEN analyze it. The way it's supposed to be experienced. Lots of channels stop every 20 second and go back 15 times and it just seems they don't give the song any respect and only care about getting to the next part they can "react" to. As someone that makes music I really appreciate how you do your channel. keep it up man.
Thanks! I've had a few people comment and say I need to stop the songs and just....no. I find that to be disrespectful, chopping up someone's work, but even aside from that it makes it difficult to experience the song if the momentum and atmosphere and tension and pacing are constantly interrupted. I can appreciate the stop/start format to an extent as it allows the reactor to get their thoughts out but I feel that works best for people who actually have something to say about it, like musicians or teachers or whatnot. I mean, there's probably been a lot of times that I've wanted to say something and forgot about it by the time I'm analyzing so I *get* the process. But at some point it ruins the song and I'm not about that. I'm glad my opinion on this and the way I go about it all is appreciated in the community. :)
My favorite Mastodon song from my favorite Mastodon album! When you realize that Skye was the drummer Brann Dailor's sister and she committed suicide at the age of 15 it completely changes the feel of this song and album. Also Brann is doing the high vocals. Brann is one of my favorite drummers. If you want to hear an amazing example of his symbol work, check out Stargasm.
I love them so much, I got to see them once with Baroness, and once with Queens of the Stone age, such a amazing band! I found a super unique band for you, Ottone Pisante, the members play trombone, trumpet and drums.
Their first four albums are pure gold. I personally never really got into their more recent albums. Just felt like, "more Mastodon" to me. That's not to say they're bad albums, just didn't click with me as much as Remission, Leviathan, Blood Mountain, or Crack the Skye.
fell in love with Mastodon on the first album...mindblowing stuff....listen to those drums. 2nd album was great.....3rd....sort of ok....then lost it.....now I will freely admit that this is a fault of mine that I have have with a large number of bands
Thanks for the reaction. I love this band and especially this album. They actually had to grow on me. When I first heard them I kept hearing Ozzy Osbourne voice. All of the band members do vocals and of course they have a guest vocalist on this song. The Last Baron would be a good one for vocal distinction imo. I love Brann's (the drummer) clean voice, especially in Emperor of Sand album. I haven't heard all of their albums. I'm working through their discography here and there. Thx again.
It's wild that all of the band members do vocals. I wish I could have seen that during the reaction. I might have to look up a live playing of some Mastodon to see cuz I'm a sucker for bands with multiple vocalists.
Cleans are Brann the drummer and the harsh are a guest spot but it fits so well because the "usual" harsh are Troy the bassist and he even makes a small spot in this song if I'm not mistaken. Very similar style. Would definitely recommend more mastodon so you can hear that! Very stylistic for them to alternate.
😆 Right among all those gorgeus things from the guitars you're honing in on the drums 😂 Don't get me wrong, Brann's drumming is certainly world class, but it's such a clear sign of your transformation into a total drum nerd... 😉 Brann is also the lyricist (and one of the vocalists) and this song is about his horrible experience of his very close, nine months younger sister Skye lost to suicide 💔
Agree prefer harshes to clean, it's dude from Neurosis. They've also collabed on the track Scorpion Breath, which is an absolute barn burner of a track.
I think you pointed out between the lines what makes Mastodon's music so especially good, there's interesting stuff happening all the time. The song's won't reveal everything at the first listening, so that they demand and stand multiple times of listening.
This song/album is about the death and memory of Skye Dailor, the sister of the dummer. She died when he was young and tragically. This album is predominantly viewed as their best album and their magnum opus. I absolutely love this and it will always be my favorite as it was my first true album I fully dove into. I had listened to a few songs from Leviathan and Blood Mountain, but it never stuck until I heard the single for Oblivion back in 2009.
Hell yeah Crack the Skye is a classic. This is Mastodon at their finest. When you get around to it you should check out Major Parkinson - Baseball, and Sybreed - The Line of Least Resistance. I don't care which. You've reacted to Major Parkinson before, but every song is like a new experience, honestly; and Sybreed would be new to the channel, and it's a shame they haven't been on here yet!
This one's an interesting one, cuz as people have mentioned, Scott Kelly from Neurosis does the harsher vocals in the verses. But, he's done so many guest features on their tracks, he may as well be an honorary Mastodon member at this point. But yeah, I think one good track to do would be Oblivion because all three dudes sing on it. If you can find a good quality version of the music video, that'd be ideal so you can see who is doing what. Here's a bit of a "decoder" for their vocalists lol: -Troy Sanders (bass): He's kind of the "main" vocalist. Usually has the low, raspy, almost strained-sounding voice, although he can do a higher, cleaner voice as well. In this song he sang the "I can seee the pain, it's written all over your face" part. -Brann Dailor (Drums): speaking of higher, cleaner voices; Brann has the highest voice of the band, you hear him a lot more on newer songs. This album (Crack The Skye) was actually his singing debut. He sang the chorus here. -Brent Hinds (guitar): On newer songs, Brent brings that southern twang (in both vocals & his playing). On older songs though, he did more of a higher, shrieky type of scream. Kinda sounded like a manic goblin at times, and he still does it on occasion. Check out Aqua Dementia, Capillarian Crest, Blasteroid, The Wolf Is Loose or last 30 secs of Andromeda to hear some of his harshes. And check Cold Dark Place, Jaguar God, Halloween, North Side Star or The Beast for a sample of his southern charm, so to speak lol. On this particular song I *think* he actually did the digitized vocals, oddly enough. So, he really took a back seat on this one. -Bill Kelliher (guitars): Bill actually doesn't really sing outside of live performances & backing shouts on the early albums. And it's a shame, cuz his vocals are so cool imo. They're *monstrous* tbh, like Napalm Death tier growls. Although... I guess it makes sense why they wouldn't use death metal vocals on their new stuff, which has a much more chill, proggy vibe. But uhh, yeah. There you go lol.
So much good info here. I wish I had known there were so many vocalists going into it, or maybe if I had picked a video with footage of them performance or something. It really changes up how I would approach their music, especially because I'm a sucker for bands with multiple vocalists.
@@CriticalReactions I try, I try lol. But yeah, don't feel too broken up about it, took me a while to realize there was more than one singer too. In fact, I'm sure some people *still* don't know lol. But, hey, now ya know. Maybe somewhere down the line you can do a Mastodon week or something lmao.
When you did Mastodon for the New/Old week a while back I said that this is album (Crack the Skye) where they went full prog and seemed to not quite know where to go after that, returning to their rougher/simpler roots with their next album before evolving into a metal/hard rock hybrid band after that. Many fans consider this their best album, but I've always preferred the two albums prior: Leviathan and Blood Mountain. To me, Mastodon were never a prog band, they were a band (like Metallica) that had a kind of street-tough rawness, but with more intelligence than many simpler, brain-dead contemporaries; but Crack the Skye sounded like them pretending to be a prog metal band rather than what they were: a quasi-proggy heavy metal band, which I think they perfected on Blood Mountain. Not quite sure why this track was chosen for "Unique Vocals" week, other than the fact that it features several different vocalists (which I guess is unusual to an extent).
Mastodon is one of those bands who just slowly ran out of energy. First two, three albums are fantastic and Crack the Skye is decent. Anything after those is just tragic compared to what they were.