Mastodon – Barcelona, Spain 2019
The Openers
Mutoid Man:
Unbelievable amount of power delivered just by 3 guys. This is a very funny (in a good way) group to see live. Mutoid Man was formed in 2012 in NY. You can notice the connection the band has between the members by their performance. They made a lot of jokes and their sound was great. I’m pretty sure this band is not going to perform opening but closing acts soon.
Kvelertak
If I had to sum up the performance of the Norwegian group in just one word that would be: Crazy. Ivar Nikolaisen was out of his mind from the very first second. They made a pleasant 45 minutes act. The thing that stood out here was the guitars. This band has three guitar players that add an extra layer of music that stands out beautifully. By the last song, Maciek Ofstad drank a whole beer, well drank half and spilled half on his body, and then jumped to the audience for some crowd surfing. The funny thing was that he slipped and almost falls down, but no one got injured in the end.
Mastodon
And here we are. I’ve been a fan of Mastodon for so long. And this is practically the first time I see them LIVE. I saw them once in 2010 when they opened for Metallica, but the sound system was worst that terrible. They sounded awful. And a band like this one needs to have a good sounding system because there are a lot of layers of sound on the music they deliver.
In this concert, on the other hand, the sound was unbelievable. The gig was pulled off in RAZZMATAZZ, it is a cozy hall, located in Barcelona, Spain. Which updated their sound system a few months ago. This was my first experience since this happened. I have attended to a lot of concerts here and I have to say that, (even if I don’t know how much they really invested in it) it was worth every single penny.
If any of you were aware of the social updates that Mastodon has posted recently you might know that the band from Atlanta you might know that the visual effects on their shows are unbelievable. For every song, there is a different art on the background that goes with the music. And if you know that is Mastodon’s flavor in their music you’ll know these are the perfect match. Unbelievable!
You might say that with all the notes and arrangements that this band has, maybe the LIVE performances might sound weird… or like there was missing something. Well, that is not true. I was amazed by the precision of the performers. All the notes were there. The one that impressed me the most was Brann Dailor. He is one of those people that looks like a simple guy that maybe goes surfing with his buddies and chill. But when he sits in the drum kit the true face of him is showed. He is a true machine, a beast. He makes the stickiest cement for this band. He is the true foundation of Mastodon. Well, he and Troy Sanders obviously.
This was a gig that was supposed to promote the first single of Mastodon new album, but there was a technical unknown issue and the new song couldn’t be produced. This is a good and bad piece of news. It was a shame to not hearing new material. And I will tell you why it was good in a bit.
Because this gig was not supporting any album particularly, you can see by the setlist that they play a lot of songs from all their releases. One song that I was expecting to hear on this gig was “Toe To Toes”. And I knew that this one took a lot of instrumentation and, citing Bill Kelliher, it took a lot of special sauce in its recording. I knew that the final LIVE sound was not going to be the same as the studio version. And I was not wrong. The song that I liked the most was Steambreather. I got goosebumps with that creepy, fat, and cool guitar intro.
I have nothing to add to this show, they played 20 songs, some of them not particularly short songs. And between them, the members didn’t talk a lot (they only barely did so). So I could enjoy a lot of music, performed beautifully from the first second to the last one.
The good thing that this was not a supporting tour for a new single/new album. Was that Brann told at the end of the show that they will be back in my city next year supporting the new album. And I know that bands tend to say a lot of lies on gigs. But this was stated very seriously and precisely. I don’t know, or I don’t think that he was lying. At least he said like they really wanted to come again. And that keeps me hopeful to see them again soon.
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