I THINK THERE ARE MULTIPLE MASTODON/JONAH HEX ALBUMS COMING OUT

Jonah Hex opens tomorrow, and word on the street is that it’s 85 minutes of hot garbage. This isn’t really a surprise, although it might give Mastodon fans looking to hear the band’s contributions to the flick pause about paying thirteen bucks to see it.

Luckily, if they just wait another eleven days, they can save themselves the trouble. I think. Honestly, this is one of the worst press releases I’ve ever seen, and I can’t quite figure out what the fuck it’s trying to tell us:

MASTODON COMPOSED ORIGINAL SCORE TO UPCOMING FILM JONAH HEX WITH OSCAR®-NOMINATED COMPOSER MARIO BELTRAMI

MUSIC AND SCORE FROM THE MOTION PICTURE “JONAH HEX” MARIO BELTRAMI AND MASTODON TO BE RELEASED BY REPRISE RECORDS THIS FALL

MASTODON TO RELEASE EXCLUSIVE EP OF TRACKS FROM THE JONAH HEX ORIGINAL SCORE VIA ITUNES AND ALL DIGITAL RETAILERS ON JUNE 29TH

Burbank, CA – Following the June 18th opening of the feature film Jonah Hex, Reprise Records will release a 6-track EP from Mastodon from the film’s original motion picture score Jonah Hex on June 29th, 2010.

Jonah Hex features an original score by Reprise recording artists Mastodon and Oscar®-nominated composer Mario Beltrami (The Hurt Locker, 3:10 to Yuma). Mastodon were asked to create the score personally by the film’s director, Jimmy Hayward who was inspired by repeated listenings of Mastodon’s 2006 album Blood Mountain. “Jimmy called us out of the blue as a fan,” bassist Troy Sanders told Paste magazine in an interview. “It was the most beautiful, authentic way to collaborate.”

Reprise Records will also release an exclusive EP of six of Mastodon’s tracks from the film Jonah Hex score on June 29th. For their first film scoring experience Mastodon recorded the tracks for Jonah Hex by viewing movie footage and actually composing the score spontaneously on the spot in the studio. This method of experimental and immediate composition proved to be a daring, daunting and ultimately fun way of creating music together over a short period of time. The resulting sessions yielded incredibly exciting results produced in a completely different way than they normally would approach writing and recording for a Mastodon album. Fans will get a chance to hear the four new tracks: “Death March,” “Clayton Boys,” “Indian Theme,” and “Train Assault” with two bonus versions as they become available through iTunes and all other digital outlets.

So unless we’re defining “this fall” as June 29 and the words “will also release” as “will only release,” I think what this is saying is that on June 29 this Mastodon EP is coming out, which will have six songs, four of which are new; and then, in the fall, there will be another album, this of the score the band did with composer Marco Beltrami, or, as he’s known in this press release, “Mario Beltrami.”

But since the headline is the only mention of the score being released in the fall and the release never specifies what the other two tracks on the Mastodon EP are, I’m just interpreting to the best of my abilities.

ANYWAY, it’s cool that the band composed some stuff spontaneously while watching the movie. That’s how Neil Young did the score for Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, and it came out beautifully. Hopefully we’ll able to say the same about this Mastodon music.

In fact, for no good reason, here’s some of that Dead Man score:

-AR

Thanks to Slayer expert, occassional MetalSucks contributor and all-around awesome human being D.X. Ferris for the tip!