Review: Mastodon 9/6/2006

left: close encounter of the blurred kind - Brent from Mastodon

#39
Wednesday September 6 2006
Mastodon
Converge
Rams Head Live! Baltimore

I figured I was going to miss The Bronx because I had to work at both jobs and therefore couldn't leave for Bawlmor earlier than 7:45.

I knew exactly where the venue was because I had once tried to purchase tickets to Matisyahu there. The parking garage was a little more tricky to find and the first 4 1/2 levels were marked 'valet only' (which may or may not have been true) so I ended up parking on 5, only to find out that the elevators don't work. And the parking garage was more expensive than the website stated ($10 vs $7).

After a very thorough bag search, I headed in for the last 3 Converge songs (one of which I actually knew - go figure!). The actual concert space looked nice, but was not actually that great. Especially sound-wise. There is a big bar and some food windows near the entrance (non-bar food stuff, which was nice). The space in front of the stage is probably about the size of the Black Cat's upstairs. There are balconies (where there appear to be tables), but they were closed off to the riff-raff, leaving only assholes who spill their drinks on the crowd (and know the band) up there. There's another bar behind the sound booth, which has crappy beer on tap for an expensive price.

Mastodon came on about 9:30pm to an intro about a hotdog with a face, that screams. This was the first night of their big tour to promote their new album Blood Mountain (out Sept 12 - pre-order today!). Seriously, though. If I didn't already really like Mastodon, based on that performance I would never listen to/watch them again. The first half of the show was worse than listening to an 18 Visions sound-check. Most of that wasn't the band's fault, but I expected a lot better. They don't really move around much on stage either. I think they could really benefit from some kind of light show or some expert background droppage. The crowd was pretty craptacular as well, consisting of mostly poorly-groomed (and some very stinky) high-school or college students with the occasional FedEx man or skanky girlfriend mixed in. I don't really know a nice way to put this: I was bored and the sound was horrible and I didn't have a good time. And that was before I got a drink spilled on me from above. I started out standing behind the sound booth but I couldn't see half of the stage from there due to the 'industrial design chic' duct work so I moved over near a column about 1/3 of the way back from stage right. After the drink spilling and some smelly kid moving right in front of me, I moved back and into the side area around the bar. The sound was actually much better from there (although the overall show improved in the second half). They played some new songs and a good mix of older ones. There were so many instrumental parts, it was like a prog rock show. Combine that with the smelly people....crust prog indeed. Oh, and I bought a shirt with a flying unicorn on it. Sweet.

[NYTimes.com review of Mastodon show/new album]