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Slant Magazine

Crack the Skye presents a stunningly original fusion of sounds.

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Paste Magazine

Amidst blistering tritone riffs and arpeggiated chords is a group keener to explore sonic harmony than crank the distortion. Crack the Skye is an epic trek across the space-time continuum, entirely on Mastodon’s terms.

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musicOMH.com

Crack The Skye is a monolithic achievement from a band that never compromises in terms of vision or style. It's easily the best metal album of the last 10 years.

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Delusions of Adequacy

It’s the rarest type of album: one that exceeds every expectation you may have, branding itself in your mind forever and constantly surprising you with how amazing it is.

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Tiny Mix Tapes

Crack the Skye has the feel of a classic metal album, steeped in impressive musicianship and stylized construction; it’s the kind of album you can repeatedly rock out to without ever feeling the desire to skip even one moment of its sprawling majesty.

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Austin Chronicle

Crack the Skye is a prog-metal classic, void of pretension or hesitation.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

It’s the songs that matter most on Crack The Skye, and the songs have rarely sounded stronger.

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PopMatters

As is the case with metal music in general, it’s best enjoyed as one gigantic, ostentatious package, and although Mastodon’s approach has been altered slightly on this album, they never fail to deliver that end of the bargain, record sales be damned.

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The New York Times

Fantastic in every sense, the album is also girded with hard-fought musical and emotional maturity.

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Boston Globe

The album will be attractive to head bangers, math rockers, and now even classic-rock devotees thanks to guitarists Brent Hinds's and Bill Kelliher's deep devotion to the almighty riff.

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Blender

Mastodon present a prog-metal concept that would make Stephen Hawking bang his head.

Observer Music Monthly

If this all sounds a bit heavy going, Crack the Skye offers plenty of simple pleasures as Mastodon heap on the musical melodrama, with a more-is-more approach to fretwork that's bound to see them liven up moshpits when they support Metallica this summer.

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Rolling Stone

There will be naysayers among the band's extreme, tatted legions. But Crack the Skye is an awesome display.

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Spin

While the band still lack a truly distinctive vocalist, it's become clear that with their mastery of water, earth, and skye, Mastodon's music now feels as powerfully elemental as its subject matter.

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All Music Guide

First off, a warning: the best way to encounter Mastodon's Crack the Skye for the first time is with headphones. Reported to be a mystical -- if crunchy -- concept record about Tsarist Russia, this is actually the most involved set of tracks, both in terms of music and production, the band has ever recorded. "Ambitious" is a word that regularly greets Mastodon -- after all, they did an entire album based on Moby Dick -- but until now, that adjective may have been an understatement. There is so much going on in these seven tracks that it's difficult to get it all in a listen or two (one of the reasons that close encounters of the headphone kind are recommended). It may seem strange that the band worked with Bruce Springsteen producer Brendan O'Brien this time out, but it turns out to be a boon for both parties: for the band because O'Brien is obsessive about sounds, textures, and finding spaces in just the right places; for O'Brien because in his work with the Boss he's all but forgotten what the sounds of big roaring electric guitars and overdriven thudding drums can sound like. The guitar arrangements on tracks like "Divinations" and "The Czar," while wildly different from one another, are the most intricate, melodically complex things the band has ever recorded. There are also more subtle moments such as the menacing, brooding, and ultimately downer cuts such as "The Last Baron," where tempos are slowed and keyboards enter the fray and stretch the time, adding a much more multidimensional sense of atmosphere and texture. Still, Crack the Skye rocks, and hard! Its shifting tempos and key structures are far more meaty and forceful than most prog metal, and menace and cosmological speculation exist in equal measure, providing for a spot-on sense of balance. Some of the hardcore death metal conservatives may have trouble with this set, but the album wasn't recorded for them -- or anybody else. Crack the Skye is the sound of a band stretching itself to its limits and exploring the depth of its collective musical identity as a series of possibilities rather than as signatures. And yes, that is a good thing.

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Pitchfork

In a way, Mastodon operates something like prime-era Metallica, unleashing these huge, blistering tracks that journey over peaks and valleys and ditches and oceans before leaving you spinning.

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No Ripcord

Crack the Skye follows Mastodon’s uncanny tradition of crafting a brand of heavy metal that is unabashed, mazelike, and above all, fresh.

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New Musical Express (NME)

'The Czar' is a microcosm of Crack The Skye: thuddingly impressive, richly textured and constantly surprising.

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Dusted Magazine

Hinds and Co. have dispensed with the neanderthal growls and screams of past records, which might have robbed Crack the Skye of its surprising grace and pushed it closer to the nu-metal end of the spectrum.

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Drowned In Sound

Wanna hear the real masters of puppets? Pop this record on and recoil as you realise the aforementioned are but limp and loose-limbed marionettes compared to Mastodon’s array of all-conquering modern metal cacophonies.

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Mojo

It is Mastodon's ability to blend such grandstanding flourishes with a powerful sense of songcraft that suggests Crack The Skye might be some "Master Of Puppets" breakthrough for the Atlanta quartet. [May 2009, p.98]

NOW Magazine

The overwhelming headiness, relentless heaviness, behemoth riffing, technical proficiency and epic scope of Crack (at least three listens are needed before it all sinks in) should be enough to prove that these guys are the Rush of extreme metal.

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Alternative Press

The music is as ambitious as the plot, but more coherent. [May 2009, p.116]

The Phoenix

There's more melody here than on previous Mastodon albums; opener 'Oblivion' even has a sweetly grungy Alice in Chains breakdown. And Brendan O'Brien's production does increase the fist-pumping factor in 'Divinations' and 'Crack the Skye'--the latter of which bites some of Metallica's Black Album rumble. But this is still a forbiddingly dense piece of post-prog rock.

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Entertainment Weekly

Happily, the Atlanta quartet has jettisoned most of its sludge aesthetic and now crafts a dynamic sort of hard-rocking head music, equal parts King Crimson and King's X.

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Los Angeles Times

Crack the Skye is Mastodon's most involved album to date, relying on hyper-intricate guitar arrangements and production nuance in service of its freaky inter-dimensional mythology.

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cokemachineglow

There’s some really wicked ideas buried in the mud here, but between some humdrum instrumental passages and a lot of nu-metal lite-style singing and the general mess of sonics trying to pull them out is like forcing yourself to listen to Joe Satriani for the cool parts.

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Q Magazine

As richly rewarding a work of brilliance as it is, Crack The Skye will nonetheless be beyond the ken of all but those with the most open of minds--or pre--attuned ears. [Apr 2009, p.107]

Sputnikmusic

For metal devotees seeking heaviness and shred paired with otherworldly curio, Crack the Skye is the be all and end all, but for anybody without a Celtic Frost tattoo, do not follow "the wise man's staff / Encased in crystal."

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 9.4 (out of 10) based on 65 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

John A gave it a10:
From rapid crushing riffs to shimmering melodies Crack The Skye has it all, something for everything. The interplay between Troy Sanders and Brent Hinds with the vocals ia fantastic, and the guitar solos are astounding. There's twists and turns, here Mastodon take you on a thrilling journey through beautiful soundscapes.

Joe S. gave it a10:
Best album from the best metal band alive. Need I say more?

Patrick D gave it a10:
Mastodon can now place themselves among the elite with the recording of Crack the Skye, emotion can be felt throughout the entire Disc, from funky basslines to pounding guitars to the tag team sonic fury displayed by Bill Keliher and Brent Hinds. It all leads to one of the, if not the Best metal albums of the last decade.

Mike I gave it a10:
Easily a 10 for just pure replay value. It's tough to find any weak points in this album. I haven't heard a record this good in a long time like most others have stated.

Danny F gave it a10:
Amazing! Just lite up a joint and slip into Oblivion. I'm glad Mastodon doesn't pump out the same album every time! Every album has been skillfully crafted, and Crack The Skye displays the band beautiful textures and song crafting ability in fine detail.

Mark K gave it an8:
For a metal band to actually progress beyond low grinding toneless riffing and belch singing is quite rare, so Mastodon immediately caught my attention. They are coming across as a band who explore new musical textures with known instruments and techniques and seem to be taking metal as just one more ingredient in their overall musical pot, which is something special and seems strangely honest. This record itself trades low end punch for beautiful melodies and freak outs, everything well executed and very well recorded and mixed. My personal favorite has to be Oblivion, which sums up perfectly what they were going on about in this record, a feeling of depth and perception in a mix of heavy playing and elegant evocative melodies.

paul c gave it a9:
Wow. i haven't been this hooked on a metal album in a long time. great melodies, brutal passages and an interesting theme. their best yet by a long shot.

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