The Hunter - Mastodon - 2011

I have been playing Mastodon's latest, the much-anticipated The Hunter, since receiving it Monday and, specifically, during virtually all uninterrupted waking hours since my last posting two days ago. Not necessarily because I was immediately smitten but because, despite its 53-minute length across 13 songs, it flies by and the compositions, dense as ever, are so hard to digest in this fleeting form. It's also been a challenge to define what makes The Hunter so very different while at once so familiar. It's an album in the purest sense, a collection of songs in a single sleeve, not necessarily linked by any overarching theme apart from rock and roll by Mastodon. Fun-size nuggets of progressometallislopera replace the extended feasts we've become accustomed to and it's more than a little difficult for this listener to decide how best to dig in.

Unto the Locust - Machine Head - 2011

This week has been utterly blessed with highly-anticipated new music and the crucial decision today was which album to review first. The solution came easily as, simply, I wanted to write most about the one I have been listening to the most. Mastodon has been fantastic and Chickenfoot a hell of a lot of fun but Machine Head's Unto the Locust has been absolutely addictive. It's another peak among many in a discography whose highs outnumber its lows twofold and, by this point, Machine Head have melded all of those noises into a sound all their own; a ferociously deathly melodic thrash that sounds like, well, Machine Head '94 meets Machine Head '03 meets Machine Head '07.

Monday Metal in the Mail - Mastodon, Machine Head and Chickenfoot

For once, the stars aligned and the good old U.S. Mail brought me not one, not two but three new releases a full day early and I spent Monday evening in blissful listening mode soaking up Mastodon's The Hunter, Machine Head's Unto the Locust and Chickenfoot III.

Full-on reviews for each will follow this week as I give each a couple more spins to fully digest. Until then, in true Twitter fashion, first impressions in 140 characters or less:

Mastodon - The Hunter: Touches of The Sword and Queens of the Stone Age permeate a riff-heavy collection of songs tied together this time only by the gospel of rock.

Machine Head - Unto the Locust: All the signature elements are in place yet it never falls into "sounds like..." territory aside from, dammit, it sounds like Machine Head.

Chickenfoot - III: God damn, this is a band. Never knew Joe Satriani's middle name. Chickenfoot III makes it apparent: Joe Motherfuckin' Satriani.

Twenty Other Records I Love Almost as Much as Led Zeppelin II

I wanted to go outside 1,001 - or even 100 - of the usual essentials for that this post. There are certainly plenty of records populating the usual lists that I agree are indispensable. That said, there are also dozens rarely listed anywhere, even in genre sub-rankings, that I simply could never be without. My only criteria for this list, aside from general unlistedness elsewhere, is that the albums must be at least two years old in order to ensure it isn't just infatuation. Here they are, twenty records I will never part with, ranked only alphabetically by artist: