Mastodon - Leviathan [2LP Blue]

Mastodon's Leviathan surfaces again on blue double vinyl, the 2004 concept album that hauled Herman Melville's Moby-Dick into the deep end of progressive sludge metal.

Their second album found the Atlanta quartet trading some of the raw fury of Remission for something more ambitious, recorded in Seattle with producer Matt Bayles. Brann Dailor's whirlwind drumming, the twin guitars of Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher and Troy Sanders' roar gave the tale of Ahab and the white whale all the weight it needed.

"Blood and Thunder" opens with a harpoon-sharp riff and a guest vocal from Clutch's Neil Fallon, while "I Am Ahab" and "Iron Tusk" charge forward with crushing, galloping intensity. Neurosis' Scott Kelly adds his weathered voice to the churning "Aqua Dementia".

The centerpiece is "Hearts Alive", a nearly 14-minute epic that builds from brooding atmospherics into towering, tide-turning heaviness, before the instrumental "Joseph Merrick" brings the voyage to a calm, eerie close.

Named album of the year by several major metal magazines when it first came out, it remains a cornerstone of modern heavy music, and spreading it across four sides gives those long, roiling arrangements plenty of room. The blue vinyl, fittingly, suits its oceanic theme rather nicely, too.