There’s always the unrealistic hope that once a band signs on to a major label they’ll use their newfound money and power to make better art than they could have before. It hardly ever happens, but when it does, knowing that a band you believed in didn’t screw you over even though they had all the chances in the world is a great feeling. After seeing Mastodon at the Rockstar Mayhem tour last summer with Slipknot and Disturbed, even though they were an oasis of awesome in a barren desert of bullshit, I feared my days of praising the band were doomed to an end. Thankfully I couldn’t have been more wrong. Finagling a copy of their upcoming record has firmly planted an “I Still Love Mastodon” bumper sticker on my brain, and it’s going to be there for a while still. Crack the Skye is totally tits.

It’s hard classifying the new record in terms of genre. Everything the band has done before has been metal first and foremost, but their new record is a much more prog album than a metal one. It’s still quite heavy, but the heavy doesn’t seem to be the emphasis anymore. There are several vocal sections you can — and want to — sing (not scream) along to, and the album is packed with guitar melodies that triumphantly noodle into outer space. Then there’s the actual concept of the record. Drummer Brann Dailor explains it in this Billboard interview:

It's about a crippled young man who experiments with astral travel. He goes up into outer space, goes too close to the sun, gets his golden umbilical cord burned off, flies into a wormhole, is thrust into the spirit realm, has conversations with spirits about the fact that he's not really dead, and they decide to help him. They put him into a divination that's being performed by an early-20th-century Russian Orthodox sect called the Klisti, which Rasputin is part of. Knowing Rasputin is about to be murdered, they put the young boy's spirit inside of Rasputin. Rasputin goes to usurp the throne of the czar and is murdered by the Yusupovs, and the boy and Rasputin fly out of Rasputin's body up through the crack in the sky and head back. Rasputin gets him safely back into his body.

Ugh…drugs. On their upcoming tour the band will be playing Crack the Skye in it’s entirety. Seattle will get the pleasure April 22nd at Neumos, with Kylesa and Intronaut opening. Mastodon also hope to make a short film to accompany the record, a la The Wall.

Go to their Myspace to hear the single, “Divinations.” It’s one of the few instances where my favorite track off a record, especially a record full of long, indulgent prog tunes, is the three and a half minute radio single. But what can I say? This song has everything you could possibly want out of single: it’s catchy, it’s memorable, and it totally shreds. I hope mainstream rock radio plays the crap out of it, because it’s probably going to be the best major label rock single to be released all year. Crack the Skye will available in stores on March 24th.