Heavy Song of the Week: Mastodon Get Feral Again with “Barbarian’s Blood”

Heavy Song of the Week is a feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal, punk, and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week, we highlight the new album track “Barbarian’s Blood” from Mastodon. It’s with vicious drums that Mastodon opens their newest album Marrow Deep, bringing to mind a more savage variant on the ripping drums that opened Blood Mountain 20 years ago. That sense of mythic murk and magical heavy metal of the Blood Mountain era continues across the build of the song toward its first eruptive chorus. The hunger of their third studio album, the one that followed their breakthrough in Leviathan, their first on a major label, the one that would determine whether they had a future or not, is felt again here. You can feel the weight they bear. They have to honor a fallen brother as much as they have to defend their ability to continue to exist, to find vitality in death. The eruptive force here is akin to Crack the Skye, an album likewise born out of explicit grief and the loss of a sibling. Similarly, we see a marked transformation on “Barbarian’s Blood.” The transformation here, however, is more complete and all-encompassing. Rather than sign...