MASTODON Kicks Off European Tour; Photos Available

Atlanta progressive metallers MASTODON kicked off their European tour yesterday (Thursday, February 4) at at Magazzini Generali in Milan, Italy.

Photos of the concert are available at Musica Metal, MetalItalia.com.

The band setlist was as follows:

01. Oblivion
02. Divinations
03. Quintessence
04. The Czar
05. Ghost Of Karelia
06. Crack The Skye
07. The Last Baron
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08. Circle Of Cysquatch
09. Aqua Dementia
10. Where Strides The Behemoth
11. Mother Puncher
12. Iron Tusk
13. March of the Fire Ants

In a recent interview with PyroMusic.net, MASTODON vocalist/bassist Troy Sanders stated about the songwriting process for the band's latest album, "Crack the Skye", and plans for the group's follow-up effort, "Like the constellations, we like to create patterns and tell stories. Creating stories for us is... telling the story is parallel with our band and personal lives and experiences. It's left literal that way and it allows us to create these stories and create a broader picture. Again, I like to use the word multi-dimensional. We like to have that in our sound and our stories. So, it's a way for us to get personal as well as more mystical.

"'Crack the Skye', it was based around the element of ether. So that kind of... you know, 'Leviathan' was water, 'Remission' was fire, 'Blood Mountain' was elements of earth and now 'Crack the Skye' is literally surrounding the element of ether, the dark matter that dominates the universe, you know, outside of our atmosphere. So the book of elements, the chapters are complete and now we can close the book of elements. Where this leads us, we don't know yet, but having a themes throughout our past four records has definitely worked for us. Whether we'll continue on that path, it's too early to tell."

"All of our music is very, it's not really predetermined. None of our ideas are predetermined. We don't get together and go, 'Hey, guys, let's put out a brutally heavy album next,' or 'Hey, guys, let's have a couple of short and sweet songs.' It never happens like that. It just, we just let the authenticity reveal itself. Whatever emotions come through our souls and out of our fingers and through our instruments and into our ears, that circle just comes very naturally. Whoever's got an idea, whoever's got a feeling, we just kinda lay it on the table and then begin to elaborate on that and then we go through it meticulously, over and over until we write what we consider a good song. Then we'll do that until we feel we have an album's worth of material. So nothing is talked about or preconceived at all.

"The musical waters, we're free to float on any musical waters we choose and I have no idea where this band is... I have no idea where this band's sound is moving towards.

"When we're done touring the 'Crack the Skye' record, we'll go home, rejuvenate our batteries both mentally and physically and then we'll go down to our space, our practice space and just start hashing out whatever ideas people have that we've collected along the way. So it's a big question mark."

Photo below courtesy of Musica Metal