MASTODON: New Album Release Date Announced; Official 'Black Tongue' Stream Available

Atlanta progressive metallers MASTODON will release their new album, "The Hunter", on September 27. The follow-up to 2009's "Crack The Skye" will be MASTODON's third studio CD to be made available on Reprise Records in the U.S. and Canada and the band's first to be issued through Roadrunner Records outside of North America.

Beginning today, MASTODON will launch a pre-order at MastodonRocks.com for "The Hunter" limited-edition package, which includes a CD/DVD housed in a digipack with an exclusive alternative artwork cover, a 20" x 30" lenticular poster featuring the album cover of the standard CD, an Augmented Reality Experience by Total Immersion (more on that later) that will contain exclusive content only available to this package, plus an instant download of the band's first new album track, "Black Tongue", also available for sale through all participating digital music retailers starting today.

The visual companion to the song "Black Tongue", featuring contemporary American folk artist A.J. Fosik, creator of "The Hunter" cover art piece, can be seen below.

Want more MASTODON? Fans who purchase the limited-edition package will also receive a download of "Curl Of The Burl", the first official single from "The Hunter" before it becomes widely available for sale at all digital retails stores.

This limited package is a one-time-only edition. Once these exclusives sell out, no more will be created.

When asked about the sound of MASTODON's forthcoming album, drummer Brann Dailor told the German edition of Metal Hammer magazine, "When you listen to the songs, they don't sound as 'fun' as we perceive them to be, I guess; it's still pretty extremely heavy material." He added, "We had a few songs that were kind of, not left over from 'Crack The Skye', but just stuff that we wanted to be on that album, but that album kind of took on a whole different thing of its own and there were a few stragglers that were super-heavy and crazy that didn't make it, and we finally got to put them on this record. And then we wrote a whole bunch of brand new stuff. There's, like, 14 songs that we recorded. And it's sort all over the place a lot of different sounds. Some straight-up classic-rock-sounding songs, straight-up death metal-sounding songs and some completely bizarre, weirdo rock songs that we're not really sure what they are, but we love them."

"The Hunter" was recorded at Doppler Studios in Atlanta with producer Mike Elizondo. Drum tracks were previously completed in Los Angeles at the legendary Sound City Studios where NIRVANA's masterwork "Nevermind" was recorded.