When Mastodon frontman Troy Sanders let it slip back in January that a coheadlining North American tour with Opeth was in the works, stateside metalheads freaked en masse, and understandably so. For sheer personality, musical complexity and cathartic guitar onslaught, these two bands from opposite sides of the pond—Opeth hailing from Stockholm, Mastodon from Atlanta—have climbed kindred creative paths to the top of the metal heap. A joint tour, with its built-in hype machine and all the bells and whistles, seemed like a no-brainer.
Call what they do “progressive metal” or anything you like—Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt doesn’t give a shit. As the sardonic wit and, at 37, the charismatic elder statesman of the Scandinavian metal scene, Åkerfeldt has inhabited every persona imaginable, from the death metal Cookie Monster growler of 1995’s Orchid to the Greg Lake–ish schizoid crooner of the band’s latest prog-rock masterpiece, Heritage. Amazingly, Opeth’s fan base has remained loyal through all the changes—a point hammered home at a sold-out Webster Hall last September.
Mastodon, meanwhile, has reinvented itself with each successive (and carefully curated) concept album, taking a hard left turn with last year’s The Hunter—a sonically diverse outing rife with Metallica-like riffs (“Black Tongue”), thrash-fueled energy (“Blasteroid”) and warped psychedelic musings (“The Sparrow”). Sweden’s Ghost sets a sepulchral tone of doom-rock wickedness, making this one triple bill that might actually move the Dark Lord himself to show up for a draft of the magic elixir.—Bill Murphy