Live Review: Mr Mama / Mastodon

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Mr Mama (BE)

Guest review by Cosmicmasseur

Sojo, 06/11/2004

Belgium’s Mr. Mama entered this gig with nothing to loose and everything to gain. This quartet warmed up the ground and gained their support for the most part of their 30-minute set, swaying the crowd with fast, punky metallic, ‘heavy with attitude for miles’-numbers like “Finger”, “Centro-matic” and “Eddie Tickle”. Mr. Mama digs deep into garage rock’n’roll summoning Hellacopters, Flaming Sideburns or Zeke with the thunder and lightning of a Sabbath or a Motörhead. Elsewhere, alongside a couple of numbers that vaguely (and I do mean vaguely) recall the likes of The Stooges in their greener days, there are slower, more menacing bluesier moments that are certainly worth developing further. The new songs criss-crosses bands like Blues Explosion, The Germs, The Glasspack and a touch of Trouble thrown in for good measure. Overall, the changes of pace and the mix of genres indicate that these guys aren't willing to be stereotyped as being part of any scene. A four piece with different looks, stature and – judging by the varying sonic styles they undertake – a distinct range of musical tastes. Roel’s guitars sometimes create a boeing 747 drone over which Guy’s shouting sounds like a pitbull-tired crossbreed of Rollins and Wattie Buchan, but Mr. Mama’s music never asks for pretty singing. As for the guitar solos, imagine Wino without tattoos wearing a Fast Eddie Clarke t-shirt. By the way, he wore a Five Horse Johnson t-shirt. Bassist Danny chooses to hold down the fort with booming underlying bass lines and hard hitter Patrick beats the skins thoroughly and thinks all the time he is playing in Down, Eyehategod or name your favorite NOLA-band. The playing is generally good, though there were a few places where their timing is a little off. I'm not an expert or dedicated fan of this type of music, but Mr. Mama nevertheless delivered a solid set of energy-driven punk/metal/stoner rock’n’roll. It is wild, chaotic, ugly and unstoppable. They may not be liked by everybody, but they've got some killer grooves. There is no denying that.

“No messages, no grand statements, no frills, just rock’n’ roll for its own sake. Their primary goal is, by consequence, to play often, and to play loud.” (Taken from Mr. Mama’s bio). Amen

Mastodon (USA)

Sojo, June 11th, 2004.

They should’ve called themselves Thesaurus, because that’s exactly what they made me realize I need. Or perhaps they just reminded me of the inadequacy of language by being so damn hard to pinpoint. Anyway, you don’t talk about Mastodon in terms of “good”, or “tough” or “impressive live act.” They seem to defy the traditional approach and by consequence the usual discourse that’s applied to describe rock bands. Maybe people shouldn’t discuss Mastodon at all and just experience them, be overwhelmed by them or even submit to them. As is the case with many other bands that are extremely heavy and hard to categorize, Mastodon is the kind of band that you like or don’t like. There’s no way in between, there’s no part of them you can like and another part to dislike. It’s just there, in your face, in all its prehistoric, lumbering heaviness. Oh sure, on their 2002 album Remission, there are also some quieter passages bordering on sheer beauty, like in “Trainwreck,” “Trilobite” and “Elephant Man,” but usually they’re more about setting the atmosphere of pending doom that’s coming next. That said, these guys are capable of creating music that’s nearly unfathomable, despite that eternal wall of sound. There’s the crushing dual guitar assault that incorporates 35 years of metal history (riffs, heaviness, speed, wankery, etc) as well as a lyrical pulse underneath it. There’s the insane roar of the vocals, the band’s knack for fractured rhythms, angular breaks and uncanny signatures and then … there’s that “drummer” (Brann Dailor), and I’m telling you, what that guy does is barely human, it’s like martial arts on a drum kit. At the end of the show in the Sojo, bassist/singer Troy Sanders told the enthusiastic audience they had to stop, because otherwise their drummer would get a heart attack. Well, thirty seconds of Mastodon and you know why: the guy combines a nearly incredible velocity with a lot of brutality, the best thing about it being that he rarely settles for the straightforward thrash drumming, but a much more ‘demanding’ and disorienting kind of faux messiness instead. He’s so busy all the time that it nearly seems he’s just doing something at random, filling up all the gaps by punishing his toms and snare drum as hard as possible, but when you see these guys play live, you quickly realize he’s the true anchor of a band that is tight beyond belief. One moment they’re laying down an immense racket, seemingly settling into a groove and then suddenly – almost out of nowhere, they change direction in unison and do it so swift and competently that you’ll wonder whether they’re all connected to the same artificial mind or something. Of course, their qualities as a live band are honed by playing as much gigs as possible, yet they concoct a blend of thrash, hardcore, doom and a few other references (there’s the ‘70’s hard rock and “Southern twang” to some of their songs, for instance), while their technical prowess is stunning as well.

The question of course remains whether the complex and challenging nature of the music isn’t at the expense of the songs or the “soul” of them, but that’s again depending on your point of view. Because the songs’ tunefulness is more in the way guitar passages are alternated and climaxes built up than in the vocals (especially live a constant barrage of hoarse bellows) or straightforward riffery, it helps that you’re familiar with the songs, which otherwise might sound like a gooey blur after a while. However, the sound was fine at the Sojo, loud but not punishing and dense without becoming a kind of sonic porridge. As suggested above, the crushing volume and immensity of the music are sometimes so overwhelming that the finesses might get lost, but nevertheless they started off on a “quieter” note that slowly gained volume and ferocity, before kicking off “Ol’e Nessie,” one of the highlights on their debut album and until the release of their second album Leviathan at the end of the summer, probably THE preferred choice if you ever have to explain Mastodon to a newbie. Starting off with a series of single notes that intertwine and flirt with those of a second guitar for two minutes while the rumbling rhythm section slowly builds up towards an inescapable blast, they suddenly convert the subtlety into a brutally pounding pool of noise of apocalyptic stature. Even though they’re operating in a different realm, the band at times recalls the overpoweringly dense soundscapes of Neurosis, with sheets of confrontational noise that nearly smother you as you’re trying to keep up and keep breathing. And so it went on: despite the quieter sections and the guitar interplay that betrayed an indebtedness to classic hard rock, they’re about that massive sound, and that shows in their stage antics, which are extremely focused: these guys have no time to just mess around and jump up and down like a bunch of 16-year-old punks. The crowd nearly freaked out when they launched into the angular cruelty of the short “Crusher Destroyer” and banged its head en masse when they got to that part in “Workhorse” that’s possible the heaviest groove of 2002, a pounding torrent of devastating heaviness. They played a few more cuts from Remission (“Mother Puncher” being one of the highlights of the show), but also several from their new album, which were enthusiastically received by a nearly delirious audience that worshipped the band unconditionally. The new songs didn’t seem to deviate from their chosen style, combining an epic grandness with moments of clarity and sheer force. It’s not that surprising then, that Leviathan is supposed to be based (they played a song called “I Am Ahab” as well) on Moby Dick, often considered “the great American novel.” The semi-mythical struggle between a man and his nemesis was served up by the band in a form that’s both straightforward and incredibly ambitious, so it does take an ultra-competent band like Mastodon to pull it off. The set wasn’t particularly long – about 50-60 minutes, I guess – but considering the circumstances (they’ve been touring for a while, the Sojo was packed with people and sweat was dripping from about every object and person in the venue), it was fine like that. As for myself, I can’t even imagine wanting to hear two and a half hours of this brand of noise - it’s so dense, boisterous and intense that an hour already makes you feel exhausted and trampled by a mammoth. The band returned to do a two-song encore they finished with Thin Lizzy’s “Emerald,” during which they found a perfect balance between accessibility and aural violence. Even though I was under the impression that they weren’t exactly on the top of their game (yet) at the Sojo, the band delivered a set that set a new standard for heaviness and dedication, the intensity of a marathon contained in a short-distance walk. Whether you can deal with it (or want to) is another matter of course, but it’s a sure thing Mastodon isn’t about to become soft and that leaves us behind with high hopes for Leviathan.