THE BEST WAY TO GET THE NON-METAL PERSON IN YOUR LIFE TO LISTEN TO MASTODON

I seem to recall an interview with Howard Jones from a few years back where, when discussing the importance of a good hook, he said something along of the lines of “You could play most Slayer songs on an acoustic guitar and they’d still sound great.”

While I doubt we’ll be seeing a Slayer edition of Unplugged anytime soon, reader Jon Dolente did send us the below video of someone calling himself “ALUxoxo” doing a cover of Mastodon’s “Oblivion” on the piano. So maybe if you can get that certain person in your life who hates metal to admit that this is very pretty, then you can play them the real thing (which isn’t really metal anyway but whatever), and then smoothly segue them into some Obituary and then… what? Too much too soon?

-AR