Mastodon teaming up with Gojira for a co-headlining tour has all the impact of King Kong vs. Godzilla or Michael Jordan playing on the same basketball team with Larry Byrd. Just the thought of the progressive hard rock excellence promised by the Mega-Monsters Tour (with special guest Lorna Shore) is enough to whet the appetites of metal-minded music fans hungry for the passion and aggression both bands deliver like none of their peers on the concert circuit.
Mastodon last toured on the strength of their ninth studio album, Hushed and Grim, which is to their catalog what Physical Graffiti was to Led Zeppelin’s. The sprawling 2021 double album was produced by David Bottrill, who made his bones working with Rush and Peter Gabriel. Boundary-bending fretwork from Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher is enhanced with guest soloing from Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil and blues guitarist Marcus King.
Hushed and Grim earned the Atlanta quartet a sixth Grammy nomination, with “Pushing the Tides” included in the Best Metal Performance category at the 64th edition of the awards show. They won at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards for “Sultan’s Curse” from 2017’s Emperor of Sand but lost the 2021 Best Metal Performance award to Dream Theater, as did fellow nominee Gojira.
Gojira Photo by: AEG Presents Las Vegas / The Mega Monsters Tour
“Amazonia” from 2021 album Fortitude was the fourth nomination for France’s extreme-metal music export. Bonded by blood due to the deep-rooted partnership of the brothers Duplantier, Gojira’s audio alloy blends elements of death, groove and thrash metal with goth overtones and socially conscious lyrics. Frontman Joe Duplantier channels his humanist view of the world into songwriting salvos and crushing guitar riffs while Mario Duplantier found early inspiration in the approach of Metallica’s Lars Ulrich to the drum kit and is a on a superhuman level when it comes to blast beats.
Guitarist Christian Andreu and bassist Jean-Michel Labadie round out a lineup that’s been together since 1998, grinding away to critical acclaim until 2005’s From Mars to Sirius put them at the top of an extreme music hierarchy that already included Mastodon. The bands toured together in 2014, by which time both acts’ authenticity, complex song structures and willingness to evolve and innovate had invigorated the metal community.
Mastodon’s multiple lead singers, including drummer Brann Dailor, create vocals that soar like magic carpets above a landscape of intricate riffing. The band made a big splash in 2004 with second album Leviathan, an epic inspired by Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Where Ronnie James Dio fought a dragon onstage, Mastodon draws on myths and monsters to create metaphors and allegories that are powerful enough to deliver live without props.
Only time will tell how much further Gojira and Mastodon can push it in terms of technique, composition and performance. They both draw from endless wells of inspiration, channel negative themes into positive messages and have stable lineups. The Mega-Monsters Tour brings the co-headliners together in their prime and at the top of their game to make what is in effect heavy metal history.
Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, 7 p.m. April 23, starting at $45 plus tax and fee. axs.com
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