[from The A.V. Club Chicago / October 19, 2009]
A bill boasting four metal bands at the top of their respective games sounds like a can’t-miss prospect, and that was mostly the case Saturday night at the Aragon as co-headliners Mastodon and Dethklok, along with openers High On Fire and Converge, joined forces for a show that alternated between unrivaled rock spectacle and highly enjoyable reruns of the headliners’ most recent road jaunts.
From the outset, the music was clearly at odds with the venue: The Aragon’s notoriously muddy acoustics turned opening trio High On Fire’s aggressive stoner riffs into a swampy roar and added an unwanted layer of confusion to Converge frontman Jacob Bannon’s mic-swinging swagger, as the audience found itself unable to decipher his between-song banter, save for the heartfelt “Thank you so much” following closing number “Last Light.”
But when the lights finally went down again, one fact became crystal clear: Absolutely no one in the house had come solely to see High On Fire or Converge. As the crowd screamed “Mas-to-don!” in unison, the Atlanta quartet dove headfirst into a start-to-finish run of this year’s Crack The Skye, just as it did this past April at Metro—this time with the added bonus of a camera crew documenting the entire show (and guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds clearly hamming it up for them, most obviously in his overanimated guitar face during “Quintessence”).
The band executed the disc flawlessly, staying true to the album’s production with keyboardist Rich Morris stationed just off stage and bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders handling Neurosis singer Scott Kelly’s duties on the title track (although the banjo intro of “Divinations” was executed via sound sample rather than by album banjoist Hinds). Mastodon clearly had the whole house on its side, but the metal crowd demanded blood, and some of Crack The Skye’s slower, moodier moments created a palpable tension in the mosh pit as it waited to explode. The sweaty masses got their wish with the second set, the front of the house bursting into an ocean of self-contained violence as the group tore into the psycho-prog of “Circle Of Cysquatch” from 2006’s Blood Mountain and never looked back.
Mastodon’s set employed a sizable visual presence, filling the stage backdrop with a mixture of B-movie footage, psychedelic interpolations of its album art, and a hodgepodge of space travel imagery, but co-headliner Dethklok took this a step further by not just using the visual element but also being its visual element. The animated version of Dethklok, from Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse, graced the giant video screen as the live band (led by show creator/lead guitarist/vocalist Brendon Small) rocked on front and center in sync. Small and second guitarist Mike Keneally were visibly ecstatic as they traded off wild guitar pyrotechnics in the homicide checklist of “Murmaider” and hilarious “pull the plug” refrain of “Dethsupport.” Ridiculous shredding and Gene Hoglan’s furious drumming aside, their lean, thrash-fueled, cartoon-based metal provided a nice bit of comic relief to Mastodon’s complicated, epic cartoonish metal.
Surprisingly, Dethklok’s setlist pulled more from its first album rather than its latest, Dethalbum II, although this may have just been due to Small and his bandmates not wanting to learn new animations with which to play in tandem. Keen-eyed fans would have recognized the between-song bits recycled from Dethklok’s 2008 tour—bass player William Murderface’s bathroom break, band mascot Facebones’ explanation of the hierarchy of Dethklok employee levels and “sweet blowjobby metal”—but the Aragon’s considerably larger capacity than the House of Blues made these old gags fresh to most in attendance.
Given the highly demanding technicality of the music, Small did a commendable job staying in character throughout Dethklok’s set, giving audience-greeting turns to the audience as vocalist Nathan Explosion, lead guitarist Skwisgaar Swigelf, and drummer Pickles (all voiced on Metalocalypse by Small). Tomahawk, Wisc. native Pickles “told” the crowd how proud he was of “these local sports teams,” cracking that the group “almost didn’t make it to the big game ‘cause we were trapped in this balloon.” Small did, however, take a moment to put the cartoon voices aside at the show’s conclusion—first to introduce his band, then to wish Chicago goodnight.
As previously announced by Mastodon (and later by Dethklok), the group had the show filmed for future release; the metal world can now look forward to a DVD that will probably look great but, this being the Aragon, will also need considerable help to sound great. Mastodon and Dethklok tore the roof off as expected, but the ballroom’s plaster walls and dome ceiling didn’t do either group any favors—although the Dethklok roadie doing soundcheck in a Fat Albert voice came through flawlessly.