Search - Today Is the Day :: Sadness Will Previal / Live Till You Die

Triple Shot of Anguish

Zachary A. Hanson | Tallahassee, FL United States | 08/11/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This three-cd set gets you a decent B-sides collection (_Live Till You Die_), which is mainly noteworthy for several tracks featuring Mastodon impresarios Bill Kelliher (bass) and Brann Dailor (drums). What you are really paying for here is their cultic masterpiece _Sadness Will Prevail_. _Live Till You Die_ is fine, but it's not of a piece, good for a few chuckles and head-bangs. You won't be chuckling much listening to _Sadness_, so here goes:



4.5 stars



I love everything about this _Sadness Will Prevail_, EXCEPT for the lo-fi production values. I wonder if Steve Austin keeps things lo-fi to keep some of their original indie cred to them, keeping them from being orthodox members of the extreme metal crowd.



Really, he wouldn't have to worry. I remember seeing Austin as a wee lad opening for I don't remember who at the Uptown Bar in Minneapolis. It wasn't near as Metal, but it was all the excruciating anguish and dissonance that you hear on _Sadness Will Prevail_. Fast forward fifteen years and I am a full-blown Mastodon fanatic and I find out that drummer extraordinaire Brann Dailor honed his chops with Austin. And then I work my way to this album--HOLY OF UNHOLIES!!! These guys are all over the place. Crimsonesque violins, a song that features endless bell tree and a harp being BEATEN underneath Austin's visceral imprecations ("Butterflies"--nothing like it), acoustic laments on acid, oh yeah and some of the extremest metal/hardcore you'll ever hear. These guys are everywhere. I'm shocked that Austin has managed to manifest such a formidable output when he nurses such a damaged psyche.



And I'm only on disc X of this tour de force. Nothing can prepare you for what occurs on the second disc, disc Y. The experimental tag gets put on way too many things in the rock world (Radiohead rarely experiments--they compose; ditto Sepultura, Deerhoof, and so forth). Disc Y, on the other hand, is like listening to a chemist let loose in a laboratory with every substance known too humankind. And the results are just as scary with Austin seeing what he comes up with. The interminable "Never Answer the Phone" is especially freaky, disconcerting, and fascinating. Just buy this CD, set aside three hours (two-and-a-half to listen and a half hour to recover), and tell me what album you have ever heard of quite this scope and reach.



While this won't be making Rolling Stone's Top 100 Albums of All Time any time soon, it certainly stands on its own in the history of rock. Austin makes gold out of s**t over and over here and he has a formidable cast to back him up, especially Marshall Killpatric on drums (best drumming on "Butterflies"). The only reason a person wouldn't like this is because they want their music comfortable and safe. Otherwise, if one pays attention and gets over the lo-fi production values, there is no experience like this out there."