Mastodon were neither the first nor the last metal band to find inspiration in a literary classic, but few navigated the source material better than they did on the Moby-Dick-inspired Leviathan — the band’s 2004 sophomore full-length, a masterwork in its own right.
Few books are both as lauded and intimidating to tackle as Henry Melville’s 1851 novel. You could argue that the sound of Leviathan — a loose adaptation about a ship captain’s vengeance-journey in search of a seemingly invincible, vessel-sinking sperm whale named Moby Dick — was just as scary. Beyond the album’s many lyrical allusions to the book, the band’s heavy pivots through prog, sludge and chicken-picked country solos complement Ahab’s general mania.
Intrigue around the literary crossover helped Leviathan become Mastodon’s breakthrough record, and likewise established the wild — and original —conceptual narrative arcs to come through records like Blood Mountain and Crack the Skye.
But with Leviathan having just hit its 20th anniversary — and the band having celebrated the milestone on the “Ashes of Leviathan” tour with Lamb of God — we asked Revolver readers to pick its single greatest cut. These are the top five vote-getters.
“Megalodon”
On its surface, Leviathan is a tribute to fiction’s most menacing sea creature, but dive a little deeper and you’ll discover that Moby Dick’s got some competition in the form of the mighty, mid-album “Megalodon.”
A siren’s song-style hypnotism reels you in quick, with guitarists Bill Kelliher and Brent Hinds wrapping beauty-spiraled arpeggios around Brann Dailor’s squid-armed drum trickery. But in one of the album’s most memorable bait-and-switches, Hinds then yanks listeners out of that serenity with a feisty, out-of-nowhere country-guitar swerve — and then the rest of the band motors into a manic, double-time toughness.
It’s the sound of a teeth-bearing predator — gassed up on 40,000 gallons of Exxon-spill crude — speeding straight towards their prey. Just like a hungry shark, this one’ll rip you to pieces.
“Iron Tusk”
There’s a brute efficiency to “Iron Tusk,” Leviathan’s hull-hammering first single. It’s a relentlessly rumbling metal anthem full of subsonic melodies and aggravated noise chord embellishing. While flanked by moodier album moments, this one’s got zero chill — an all-killer attack song of the highest pedigree.
Bassist Troy Sanders arguably alludes to the track’s fiercely malicious intent — if not Mastodon’s general M.O. — with his first heavy howls on the doom-swung punisher (“Straight line/Feel it burst, liver and lung”). The moral is this: If you put yourself in Mastodon’s sightline once they’ve begun hoisting their heavy-metal harpoons, you’re going to get violently gored by four particularly beastly Atlantans.
“Seabeast”
Some Leviathan tracks evoke the feel of Melville’s classic more than others. “Seabeast” ends up being one of the most outwardly referential pieces on the album, its lyrics explicitly introducing the Pequod’s tattooed harpooner par excellence, Queequeg, into Ishmael and Ahab’s obsessive orbit. (There’s the added meta edge of a bunch of inked-up metal miscreants banding together to dive into a “vicious mess.”)
Musically, the song also conjures sea-salted, nauseously choppy waters with wave-after-wave of percussively quizzical, mathy riffage. The pure force of “Seabeast” would threaten to capsize a lesser crew, but the salty dogs in Mastodon manage to steer through the elemental chaos like pros.
“Blood and Thunder”
“I think that someone is trying to kill me.”
This is the ultra-dramatic, in medias res lyric Sanders first steps to the mic for in “Blood and Thunder,” and in Mastodon’s game-changing second album as a whole. As far as openers go, that’s damn-near as iconic as “Call me Ishmael” — and for a generation of metalheads, arguably more so.
That said, “Blood and Thunder” probably already caught you hook, line and sinker with the Dailor-written intro riff — a chunky juggernaut Kelliher once called “jagged, angular and weird,” but also crazy crowd-pleasing.
The song, which features a note-worthy cameo by Clutch’s Neil Fallon, has become Mastodon’s self-described “Ace of Spades,” an essential, hard-hitting metal anthem you’re bound to hear in every set. And it’s going to rip, every single time.
“Hearts Alive”
Everything comes to a head in Leviathan’s penultimate “Hearts Alive.” The record’s most epic song — both in scope and its mega-sized, 13-and-a-half-minute structure — begins with mellow, lusciously arpeggiated guitar work. The tonal journeying of the two-minute intro was inspired not by Melville, but by a book of guitar chords Hinds was thumbing through at the time. It’s the calm before the storm because when the band’s full-fury metallic breaching begins, you know Moby Dick has finally arrived.
“Hearts Alive” was a bold step forward for Mastodon, a lengthy sludge-prog stunner that highlights the various faces of the then-emerging metal group. Its spotlight moment, however, is arguably Hinds’ tidal wave of trills and bends in his mega-extended solo, a performance that cemented his guitar hero status.
The highs have been many through Mastodon’s incredible career, but the climax of Leviathan is one for the ages.