Rather than slag headliner Slipknot — sorry, just can't get into bands that wear masks, reminds me too much of Kiss, an act I truly despise — let me tout another band on the Rockstar Mayhem Festival roster, Mastodon, the fiercest and smartest metal outfit on the planet. OK, perhaps that's a bit hyperbolic. But when I witnessed the Grammy-nominated Atlanta band perform a year or so back at the State Theatre, it was an onslaught of precision fury unlike anything I had previously seen. Brawny yet nimble, the quartet sprinted, stopped on a dime, offered a gorgeously meaty solo and then switched meter — making Mastodon, to my ears, something of a heavy metal jazz unit. The band's three vocalists take turns growling about battling wolves and such up Blood Mountain or chasing Herman Melville's famed Leviathan.
Rockstar Mayhem Festival: Slipknot/Disturbed/Mastodon/Dragon Force/Underoath/Machine Head/Walls of Jericho/Black Tide/Suicide Silence/The Red Chord/Five Finger Death Punch/36 Crazyfists/Airbourne, 2 p.m. Tues., July 29, Ford Amphitheatre, Tampa, $28.75-$53.25.
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2008.