To say that my relationship with metal has been complicated is a bit of an understatement. Even though heavy bands like Zao led me to care about music in the first place, I abandoned metal and hardcore in college. It wasn’t until Deafheaven released Sunbather that I started to dip my toes back in, before diving headlong into bands like Alcest, Isis, Lantlos, and Baroness.

What started as a love of music that subverts metal archetypes grew into a more sincere appreciation for the genre as a whole. Even still, I’ve found it difficult to swallow most of the more mainstream acts.

There is one massive exception to this though, and that is Mastodon, who has consistently proven themselves to be one of the most important metal bands of the last two decades. Their second album, Leviathan, was practically a coup, storming the gates of heavy metal and erecting their own flag over the fortress. It’s a massive tour-de-force, combining the fury of old school thrash with the cerebral acrobatics of prog metal and an almost cinematic sense of composition—all while singing about Moby Dick. 

This might be a newer addition to my collection, but it’s not new to me. My first introduction to Mastodon was Emperor of Sand while working third shift at a plastic factory. I had heard their name plenty of times before, and was impressed that they lived up to their reputation. I mentioned the album to a friend and they asked if I had heard Leviathan, which they regarded as their opus. I had not, and put it on while I was walking my neighbor’s dog.

It had everything Emperor had and more—the riffs were more powerful, the melodies were more moving, the progressive elements were even more heady. Over the next few years, it would become a mainstay in my workout playlists (not that I’ve ever worked out all that regularly). Then a few months ago, whilst on a pilgrimage to Amoeba Records in San Francisco, I finally found a copy that wasn’t astronomically expensive, and I had to have it.

For the uninitiated: this record rips. It fulfills all of the power that you might want coming to thrash metal, without the brainlessness that thrash seems to rely on. Tracks like “Blood and Thunder,” “Iron Tusk” and “Naked Burn” could easily slip into rock radio rotations between Metallica and Godsmack tracks and even the most neanderthalic metal fan would pump their fist. But then there are tracks that could satisfy the snobbiest of prog rock elites, like the creeping “Seabeast,” the galloping “Megalodon” or the fourteen-minute epic “Hearts Alive,” which features post metal legend Scott Kelly of Neurosis.

But of course, that’s probably a false dichotomy, as the band spends most of the record unifying these elements into one monstrous prog-thrash monolith. Even the more immediate tracks are plenty sophisticated, and the brainier tracks rock plenty hard. “Hearts Alive” even hides some of the gutsier riffs in its massive runtime.

This mastery of their craft made Leviathan a massive statement. And hearing it, it’s unsurprising to learn that it was named Metal Album of the Year by a number of publications, and has even been listed as the best metal album of the 21st century by others. Where critics sometimes get up their own asses about this sort of thing (guilty), this is one case where they’re dead on. If you haven’t listened to this record, do it. If you have, listen again. In either case, it’s well worth it.