Concert Review: Primus and Mastodon, June 6, 2018--Chicago's Northerly Island

Concert Review:  Primus and Mastodon--Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island, Chicago, June 6, 2018

On paper and in concert, this is an odd bill: Primus, a quirky and influential alternative band from the 1990s, touring with Mastodon, a contemporary metal band at the peak of its career. In common, both bands stuck to their artistic visions.
Headliners Primus, led by bass virtuoso Les Claypool who virtually reinvented how to play the instrument, mixed songs most fans came to hear (from 1989’s “Frizzle Fry” album, for example) with songs from its latest album (“The Desaturating Seven”), which most fans merely humored.

The band’s ninth studio album is an indulgent art-rock project from Claypool: a concept album based on the children’s book “The Rainbow Goblins.” The story goes that these goblins have robbed the world of its color by stealing it from a rainbow. The tracks are mostly free-form instrumentation--Claypool explores the sonic possibilities with his electric bass while relating the tale of these goblins in singsong voice. It’s a tedious affair with enough flashes of songwriting brilliance to reveal a band favoring artistic expression over commercially minded songwriting. Primus fans expect no less.
The crowd revelled in the older songs featuring classic Primus storytelling amid rumbling bass, soaring guitar leads and uptempo drumming. Songs “Tommy The Cat,” “Too Many Puppies,” “My Name Is Mud” and “Jerry Was A Racecar Driver” are seminal alternative rock songs that have cemented Primus as one of the most original and influential genre-blending bands of its time.

Mastodon's Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher

MASTODON’S OPENING SET

Mastodon opened its set with “Sultan’s Curse,” winner of the 2017 Grammy for Best Metal Performance, and from there gave the crowd a survey of songs from albums spanning 2002’s “Remission” debut to 2017’s “Emperor of Sand.”

“Crystal Skull,” “Black Tongue,” “Bladecatcher” and others are requisite songs at a Mastodon show, but the band also played a lesser-known track from 2017’s “A Cold Dark Place” EP: “Toes To Toes” featured a more mellow and melodic approach compared to the band’s more hard-rocking aesthetic.

Newer tracks “Show Yourself” and “Steambreather” energized the crowd the most as lyrics sung by the audience drowned out Troy Sanders’, Brent Hinds’ and Brann Dailor’s miked vocal efforts. [Link to review posted on Illinois Entertainer magazine website--photo gallery included.]

Primus setlist:
Too Many Puppies
Sgt. Baker
Those Damned Blue-collar Tweekers
Tommy The Cat
Southbound Pachyderm
From “The Desaturating Seven” album:
The Valley
The Seven
The Trek
The Scheme
The Dream
The Storm
The Ends?
_________
Welcome To This World
My Name Is Mud
Jerry Was A Racecar Driver
Here Come The Bastards
John The Fisherman

Mastodon setlist:
Sultan’s Curse
Divinations
Crystal Skill
Ancient Kingdom
Bladecatcher
Black Tongue
Ember City
Megalodon
Andromeda
Toes to Toes
Sleeping Giant
Show Yourself
Precious Stones
Roots Remain
Ghost of Karelia
Mother Puncher
Steambreather

Album Review: Sleep's "The Sciences"

SLEEP

*The Sciences*

(Third Man Records)

Sleep’s surprise release of *The Sciences* (six songs, 53 minutes total) is remarkable for many reasons: it’s the band’s first full-length album in 20 years; it was released on 4/20; and its themes of cannabis culture seem perfectly timed with the changing attitudes about the drug, both for medicinal and for recreational use. In other words, Sleep has never been more relevant. “Marijuanaut’s Theme” tells the adventure of an astronaut--an “inhaler of the rifftree”--bound for “Planet Iommia,” while “Giza Butler” relates the earthbound tale of “The CBDeacon” performing daily sacraments, including “salutations to the cultivators...bless the Indica fields/grateful for the yields.” But the lyrics (not necessarily sung, more like chanted or recited) are secondary to The Riff--the super-fuzzed-out, repetitive power chords that are the backbone to every Sleep song. The deliberate downstroke picking of guitarist Matt Pike allows each fuzzy chord time to ring out and to resonate. “Sonic Titan,” mostly an instrumental composition, builds like other past Sleep songs, such as “Holy Mountain” and “The Clarity,” with a bare, blusey riff that is tweaked and explored during the song’s 12-minute runtime. For a different approach, “The Botanist” instrumental track relies less on this type of riffage and more on guitar leads and single-note progressions, which results in a more cerebral sonic appeal. “Antarcticans Thawed,” a song played live for years, is the most glacially paced composition on the album and relies on lyrical allusions to H.P. Lovecraft’s story  “At The Mountains of Madness.” The 14-minute track represents the band’s most complex arrangement, with more frequent tempo changes and the most freeform, discordant guitar solos on the album.

9/10

Link to print version of this review. It appears on page 28 of the June 2018 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine.