Mastodon Launch 10th Anniversary Crack the Skye Retrospective Video Series

Crack the Skye marked a major turning point in Mastodon’s career from the all-out aggression of their early days to their proggy (and later even poppy) latter-day releases, with Blood Mountain serving as the transition. Some ten years later, the band has launched a retrospective video series in celebration of the album’s anniversary featuring video and audio recorded a decade ago, and it’s really, really interesting to hear what the guys thought about the album at the time.

In short: they were aware of how big of a left turn it was, but they viewed it as ambitious, bold and exploratory (and rightly so), talking a lot about setting out to make “a classic rock album” that would stand the test of time and go down in history as one of the band’s best. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do to top this record,” says an off-camera voice, Troy Sanders, I think. Many fans would argue that they haven’t, and most would certainly agree that Crack the Skye is one of the band’s top efforts.

Watch the first episode below. Mastodon will perform Crack the Skye in full on their upcoming tour with Coheed & Cambria; dates here.