This week in music player #04

Mastodon - The Hunter (Roadrunner-Warner Bros, 2011)

Here we are with the number 4! This is going to be an epic one, because this album is a masterpiece. I first want to say something about what a band is in my opinion. No frontman, no leaders, no founders and new members, but just pieces of a bigger picture. Instruments harmonically connected and evenly contributing to the construction of the sound. I think Mastodon are currently what gives me this kind of feeling. They are committed to the contruction of a very complex and all-involving music. When I listen to them I can't really think about who is doing what (which I always do, being a technic-nerd), but just how it sounds good. And it definitely sounds good. Their sound is changed from 2002's 'Remissions', moving to more prog-like sounds, but still at high quality level and heavy as usual. I personally consider them one of the best expression of metal in all its kinds. 'Crack the Skye' have been in the soundtrack of my year in Berlin, and I can't help associating that album to those times, and then I was waiting to hear this one to see where the guys were going now. 'The Hunter' goes beyond. It gives me the goosebumps since the first notes (like the first three notes of 'Oblivion') and makes me really go mad with the elaborated instrument lines. Some sonorities bear the (heavy) heritage of the previous record, but there are huge surprises inside, like 'Creature Lives', a piece of psychedelic-70s-prog which I thought was a cover of some obscure band of the past. This is a 9/10 with no hesitations. Favourites: Black Tongue, Stargasm and Spectrelight.

Anything else? Yes of course. Have you seen what happened for the rain here? You can get an idea here. And this happened after what we had here. Thanks to the carelessness of our administrators and politicians. In other countries, if there is any risk (risk, even without forecast) they send a message in the pay sheet remembering that as a public employee your help is requested in case of calamities like storms or earthquakes (this really happened).