There’s no throwaway rock along the lines of “Show Yourself” or stoner rock a la “Steambreather” instead, there’s a very serious, subdued tone virtually throughout this album.

What do I mean by that, exactly? Well, this is where the ‘hushed’ in Hushed And Grim comes into play Cold Dark Place was unusual in that it saw Mastodon focusing far more than usual on softer, more introspective material, and that carries over to Hushed And Grim. It seems that the band picked up on that, as of all their previous records, Hushed And Grim feels closest to Cold Dark Place. Their most recent full-length, Emperor Of Sand, received arguably the most muted reception of their albums to that point however, 2017 also saw the release of a second Mastodon release, and there was a far warmer reaction to the Cold Dark Place EP. It’s not grim in the ‘trve kvlt’ sense, but Hushed And Grim is a fairly apt name for Mastodon’s ambitious double album.Īfter a pretty extraordinary string of releases in the 2000s that culminated with 2009’s prog-metal masterpiece Crack The Skye, Mastodon opted for a more simplified and cleaner songwriting approach in the following decade, receiving the same mixed response as most other frontrunning metal bands that had opted for a similar change in direction before them.

Baron of hell doom 3