Overview
I am very excited for today’s album. Mastodon was one of my favorite bands I grew up with. “Crack the Skye” is the Mastodon album that came out around the time I started listening to them and it was one of my top albums of my later teen years overall. In 2019, I was so excited when they were on tour with Coheed & Cambria and Every Time I Die. Mastodon was playing the entire “Crack the Skye” album straight through!! I managed to attend two dates on this tour and I would have went to more if it was possible. These two concerts hold very special memories for me.
Today I am listening to Mastodon’s fourth studio album “Crack the Skye”, released March 24th, 2009 from Reprise, Sire, and Relapse Records. This album features their singles “Divinations” and “Oblivion”.
Song Analysis
The album starts off with “Oblivion” opening with a moderately slow riff, gradually adding in drums that add to the buildup. Suddenly the composition shifts and the vocals come in with mildly grim guitar riffs. I love the lyrics in the chorus, they replay in my mind quite a bit:
Falling from grace
’Cause I’ve been away too long
Leaving you behind
With my lonesome song
Now I’m lost in oblivion
Since I have been listening to this album for so many years, these words definitely hold personal value. For me they remind me of my chronic illness and how it made me unable to participate in the world around me. It does not feel like a graceful life being bed ridden and desperate to die or get better. Illness pulls you away from any relationships you have form with people, and naturally people mostly go away and forget you too while they are busy with new people and living their lives, even though you are left sick in bed with the memories of them. There are nice guitar solos half way through sprinkled over the chill stoner prog sound Mastodon is great with. We are led out of the song with the sounds of the guitars gradually fading away.
Mastodon — “Oblivion” Official Music Video (For some reason video playback is disabled outside of the YouTube website)
“Divinations” begins with the mildly harsh sounds of a banjo appregiating back and forth, eventually joined by the other instruments of the band to give it a fuller sound. You hear so many interesting things happening in the opening. Everyone is playing something crazy, yet everything is fitting so seamlessly together.
Mastodon — “Divinations” Official Music Video (For some reason video playback is disabled outside of the YouTube website)
Opening with a beautiful melodic guitar with this drum beat,“Quintessence” is so catchy and relaxing. The lyrics are crazy and paint such a vivid imagery in my head:
The demon skin is covered in fine mist
Opened his hand in my hand, holding my eyes to the future
Hovering above myself, letting loose the guided
Punching these holes in my head, the space time paradigm
Omnipresence
Primal instincts
Let it go, let it go
I enjoy a lot of the instrumental themes toward the end matching up with the themes at the beginning of the song. The song ends with this interesting noise that I envision it as the sounds of a spaceship flying away. The last words of the song are “Shield failure / Speed farewell” which are basically what made me think to imagine the spaceship.
“The Czar: Usurper / Escape / Martyr / Spiral” starts with a very high pitched melody that sounds like a keyboard synth, this slowly becomes layered with guitars and the other instruments join in. The bassline is very strong and a really great groove is created combined with the drums. The beginning of the song has a really chill vibe to it, until we hit a strong and heavy instrumental passage building up before the words, “By the light of the moon”. This part of the song honestly gives me chills, and what gives me even more chills than that is still to come! The song gets more and more intense as we go, the sound getting fuller and fuller, more and more intense. But the part that gives me the most chills is when the song dramatically slows down again and builds up again for the words:
Spiraling up through the crack in the sky
Leaving material world behind
I see your face in constellations
The martyr is ending his life for mine
After these words follows some intense guitar solos over the chill drum beat. Man it’s so emotional. After this segment we are led to themes that have repeated earlier in the song. The song ends with the instruments slowly fading away.
“Ghost of Karelia” begins with some light drumming and the other instruments join along, creating a nice groove. The vocals join in and the vocals and the words are sung in a very interesting manner:
Wrathful ones, nine eyes gaze
Holding skulls
Filled and laced
With human blood
Like a lot of imagery included within this album, these are also some interesting lyrics to imagine. I am wondering what the “nine eyes gaze” specifically means. Is there a special meaning to it?
Beginning with some nice guitar melodies over moderately paced drum rhythms, “Crack the Skye” slowly transitions into a really nice beat urging you to bob your head along. This slowly builds up to what to me feels like the heaviest part of the album through the first verse. I do not usually look much into why the artists write their songs. I usually like to extract my own meaning from the things I hear or read, but knowing that “Crack the Skye” was actually written about makes it that much more raw. “Skye” is the name of the drummer/lead vocalist Brann Dailor’s sister that committed suicide at the age of 14. Reading about that definitely made my heart sink. The words have a whole new meaning:
Mama, don’t let them take her
Don’t let them take her down
Please tell Lucifer he can’t have this one
Her spirit’s too strong
I can see the pain
It’s written all over your face
I can see the pain
You can make it all go away
To finish off the album, we are led into the powerful “The Last Baron”. Starting off slowly and increasing the intensity throughout, the composition gets more and more crazy as the song goes on. I love the singing and the words in this song, and I feel it passionately:
Take my black soul
Alive in the fires that burn my skin
Guide my eyes all through this maze
I guess they’d say we could set the world ablaze”
I love these words, and I love what comes before and after it. I love after the first time they sing the words “Will he save me”, there is guitar playing that sounds frantic and worried, I am not even sure how that’s possible. I love how the song slows down toward the end and follows some of the more slow and gentle themes featured at the beginning of this song. This piece ends with a lot of passionate playing that really ties together everything featured within this song. This song is a 13 minute progressive masterpiece, I love everything about this song that it is too hard for me to only pick out a few details.
Final Thoughts
As you can see I am totally entrenched in my love for this album and it has been dear to me for many years. This album is an amazing concept album and all of the songs together make up a wonderful story. I look forward to the next time Mastodon would play this album straight through if I am ever able to get the chance to see it again.
