Death shadows few bands like it seems to shadow Mastodon<\/a>. Several of the Atlanta band\u2019s past albums have been directly and indirectly informed by loss and grief, from 2009\u2019s psychedelic prog-metal masterpiece Crack The Skye<\/a> (inspired by the death of drummer\/vocalist Brann Dailor\u2019s sister) to 2021\u2019s Hushed And Grim<\/a> (dedicated to their late manager Nick John).<\/p>\n Marrow Deep hits even harder. It comes 12 months after the death of their former guitarist Brent Hinds, who left the band acrimoniously at the start of 2025, as well as the death of Dailor\u2019s mother. How much of Mastodon\u2019s ninth album has been specifically shaped by those events isn\u2019t clear \u2013 lyrically they\u2019ve always dealt in the cryptic and the elliptic, although that title is something of a tell.<\/p>\n Mastodon – Snakes For Dinner (Official Video) – YouTube Watch On <\/a> Musically, the album\u2019s dense knottiness can\u2019t hide the seam of anguish at its core, but it\u2019s not a dour listen. Longtime members Dailor, bassist\/vocalist Troy Sanders and guitarist Bill Kelliher \u2013 augmented here by touring guitarist Nick Johnston and keyboard player Jo\u00e3o Nogueira \u2013 have retained their heaviness and complexity.<\/p>\n Barbarians Blood pushes on through a wind tunnel of its own creation, slipping from time change to time change as the grizzly Sanders and smoother-voiced Dailor alternate vocals (poignantly, Hinds\u2019s voice, so often the third leg on the stool, is notably absent). The roaring A Vampire\u2019s Demeanour is fuelled by what sounds like cathartic fury, unsurprisingly.<\/p>\n But any air of moroseness is dispelled by Marrow Deep\u2019s shape-shifting approach. Poisonous Weapons shifts from low rumble to upward-spiralling euphoria, and Nogueira brings jazzy detail to In The Ruins \u2013 territory Mastodon have never really ventured into before.<\/p>\n Mastodon – In The Ruins (Official Video) – YouTube Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n Elsewhere, Geezer Butler<\/a> adds a fantastically fitting bass intro to The Vanishing that sounds like it could have been lifted from any of the first four Black Sabbath<\/a> albums, before the track veers off into liquid-psychedelic Planet Caravan territory (Dailor has talked about it being his vision of travelling into the cosmos to be reunited with his mother and his late sister). Clutch<\/a>\u2019s Neil Fallon makes his second appearance on a Mastodon album, here dialling up the babbling backwoods preacher man act on the playfully ominous The Three Fates.<\/p>\n In its own way, Marrow Deep is a defiant album, one that takes all the bad experiences the band have endured in recent times and turns it into something positive. Not laughing in the face of death, but not crumbling under it either.<\/p>\n
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