126. Mastodon - Leviathan (2004)

I don't know much about metal. I own the "masterpieces" of the genre and don't have much familiarity with anything outside those. I think Ride the Lightning is better than Master of Puppets and Slayer's Reign in Blood is better than both of them. Metal seems to exist entirely outside of most other types of music; there's very little, if any, cross-pollination between it and, say, "indie" or hip-hop or pop or whatever. This is somewhat by way of saying that the inclusion of Leviathan on this list smacks of tokenism--it's a great record, certainly, but it seems a little silly for them to include it when I find it hard to believe there are no other metal albums worthy of being on such a list. It seems like they felt that they had to put at least one metal album on a top 200 of the 00s list or nobody would take them seriously--a strange idea, since they managed to leave Metallica and Slayer off their 80s list, which to me is a far bigger omission (Mastodon are good, but this record's no Reign in Blood). Anyway, as for this one, all I can really say is that it's metal varied and well-composed enough to interest a non-metal fan (me). I was about 25 minutes into it before I consciously realized that the thing had been solidly kicking my ass for those entire 25 minutes without a break, and some of the record's best moments basically consist of one brilliant guitar riff after another, each following the previous one so rapidly your brain hardly has time to comprehend the power of the one that's been left behind. The effect is of an embarrassment of riches--like the band is so good at coming up with these riffs that they can afford to just throw them away. The band's strongest aspect, though, is Brett Dailor's drumming: the guy is clearly one of the best drummers alive, and at times the rest of the record almost seems to exist to justify his ridiculous fills. Anyway, if you are at all interested in metal, you undoubtedly already own this or have at least listened to it (it is without a doubt the most popular and critically respected metal album of the past 10 years). If you don't like metal, give it a try. It's about as good as a limited genre can possibly get.

MY RATING: 8.8

Mastodon - "I Am Ahab"