Mastodon Live, Newcastle (Feb 21 2010)

Mastodon's tour to promote "Crack the Skye" brought them to Europe and eventually to our neck of the woods, Newcastle.

The new album is a fantastic 'tour de force' of modern Prog Metal receiving rave reviews in just about every music journal, and deservedly so.

The gig itself was an odd one. The band played the new album in it's entirety in the first half of the show and played a selection of tracks from the previous three albums in the second half. This was my first Mastodon live experience and I have to say the band's total lack of communication with the crowd was a surprise, after all they are not a huge band yet and you would think they would be a touch more humble, but maybe that's just the way they are.

Drummer Bran Daylor was getting himself pretty wound-up with the crowd's lack of connection with the band, he was constantly shaking his head and gesturing to the fans to gee them up, but I think it was not just the crowd that were a little cold, the second half of the show saw the band loosen up a little and they looked like they were enjoying it a lot more and this carried through to the crowd, who were now merrily body slamming each other.

The musical performance itself was quite stunning, all the musicians in the band are technically very good and Troy Sanders (Bass) in particular was awesome to watch with his bizarre facial expressions and hand gestures. The video backdrop was stunning, constantly streaming superb animation and filmed clips which matched the music perfectly.

The sound mix was pretty poor, the vocals were barely audible. I think it was a case of too small a PA in too large a venue.

All in all it was good performance let down by poor sound, a stand-offish attitude from both the band and the crowd and a paltry 1 hour 15 minute set.

Still love them though.