What Makes Mastodon’s “Leviathan” LEGENDARY
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Published 2022-05-25
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Hey kids, its Uncle Ben Eller here, and this week i listened to Leviathan by Mastodon! One of my favorite records ever. Grab a sit with me, and we're gonna go through this album track by track and dissect its finest moments and sickest riffs!
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What album should i listen to next week? Let me know in the comments!
All Comments (21)
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Thanks for watching this track by track breakdown of Mastodon: Leviathan! What album should I listen to next week?
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ya gotta do Crack the Skye sometime man, awesome vid once again Uncle!
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Brent and Bill are honestly some of the best riff writers in all of metal, in my opinion anyway. The stuff they always manage to come up with is super creative and really doesn’t sound like any other band.
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One thing I love about this album is how the riffs themselves evoke the theme of water. The intro of Island sounds like a huge wave crashing into you. The two chord intro of Seabeast makes me think of a boat rocking back and forth and that beautiful lead line over top is *chefs kiss*. The thrash part of Megalodon sounds like heavy metal Jaws, I could go on. Leviathan isn’t my number one Mastodon album but as a concept record they’ve never surpassed it.
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They really created something magical when they made Leviathan. The whole album’s full of amazing songs, but Hearts Alive is their masterpiece. Epic is too tame of a word to describe it. The last three and a half minutes of that song gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. Brent’s crazy solo over that crushing outro riff is just Mastodon at their absolute best. Fucking inspired.
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Iron Tusk was my entry to Mastodon, as a drummer I was fucking blown away by the amount of fills despite not sounding like there are any fills
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You could say Mastodon's masterpiece is their..."Mastopiece" 😎🤘🔥
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I watched "stuff mastodon does" like 4 years ago and now I can play through most of leviathan correctly at full speed, the double picking was hardest. I don't know where I'd be without guitar. Mastodon ROCKS.
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"Hearts Alive" is a masterpiece. The intro and outro of this song leaves me in a state of I don't know, I can't explain. I also like how the album ends with the song "Joseph Merrick", I love listening to it when it's raining.
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I have listened to this album so many times over the years, but NOTHING compares to hearing Megalodon or Blood and Thunder LIVE, imo.
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The ending of Hearts Alive is everything.
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This album is solely responsible for my interest in sludge and doom, and it's how I learned to actually play the guitar. There is zero fat on this album, every song, every riff for that matter, is doing something awesome. Plus Brann on drums is a thing to behold in itself. And the mood of the whole thing just makes you feel like you're in the ocean with a bunch of cutthroats chasing a mythical beast. They nailed it.
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I became obsessed with a Mastodon because of your channel: something like 5-6 years ago. And now 90% of my guitar-brain memory is occupied by Mastodon songs
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It makes me so happy to see that Brann hasn’t changed much or even aged over the years.
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Watching Bill and Brent play is a great lesson in economy of motion, especially when they’re hybrid picking. They’ll be playing what sounds like a million notes at a time and their hands and fingers barely move. Legends.
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Heart's Alive is the true masterpiece imo
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That final riff in Seabeast is probably in my top 5 greatest riffs ever... Thank you for doing so well on this breakdown. I loved every second of it. You really helped me understand a lot of parts timing-wise that I was having trouble picking up. Also your tone is....perfect.
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Leviathan truly is a metal masterpiece. Amazing songwriting and so diverse.
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This album changed my life when I was 14 and made me want to play guitar. I studied the hell out of it in my room for hours on end. I thought if I could achieve playing hearts alive then I would have mastered the instrument.
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That entire coda for Hearts Alive is one of the heaviest things ever written. Also, as a Neurosis fan, it warmed my heart to hear them get some cred here. Keep up the good work, sir.
