Live at Brixton

If Mastodon never get around to a greatest hits package, Live at Brixton will do the trick. Captured at a February 2012 gig in London, Brixton finds the Georgia prog-sludge mainstays barreling through 23 choice cuts from their five good-to-classic LPs, 2002's Remission through 2011's The Hunter, a typically remarkable performance from a band whose live prowess rivals their in-studio wizardry. Like most overviews, the song selection's arguable, the impact of even the highest highs altered in their uprooting. But Brixton does the same rep-cementing, catalog-calcifying work a good hits comp is supposed to, further solidifying Mastodon's spot among the greatest big-ticket metal bands going.

Some bands make records; from the start, Mastodon have been turning out capital-A albums. From Leviathan's seafaring to Crack the Skye's out-of-body postmortems, they're three for five on concept LPs; even their 2002 debut Remission hinges loosely around that most classically metal of the Aristotelian elements, fire. Skye, with its overlong runtimes and a particularly convoluted concept, sagged a little under the weight of its own pretensions: no easy feat for a band whose best album gave a close read to a 19th century novel about whaling. The Mike Elizondo-produced Hunter was a hard swing in the the other direction: reeling in the complexities of their previous work, Hunter felt concise yet rudderless, occasionally slick to the point of sterility. Brixton, understandably, is heavy on the then-new Hunter material. But onstage, stripped of Elizondo's radio-ready production and slotted in amidst the burlier stuff from their earlier classics, it feels redeemed, finding a heft and grit they couldn't quite locate in the studio.

I first saw Mastodon in early 2004, warming up for Clutch at some shithole club several months before Leviathan's release. Even then, they seemed 15 feet tall. The show at the 4,000 capacity Brixton was, at the time, their largest-ever headlining gig. They make the most of it, tearing through 97 mostly uninterrupted minutes for a ravenous crowd. Live and on record, Mastodon's strength lies in playing the angles; they're progressive but accessible, hard to pin down yet instantly recognizable, hooky without sacrificing aggression, "literary" without getting too nerdy with it; I'm told Troy Sanders is easy on the eyes. Onstage, they aren't the kind of band to blow shit up, or waste any time with banter; at Brixton, they perform with minimal (albeit effective) lighting in front of a large Hunter banner, and only speak to the crowd as the encore-capping "Creature Lives" winds down. These songs—particularly the pre-Hunter numbers—are performed with mystifying precision, holding close to their recorded counterparts; a particularly fiery solo from Brent Hinds leads "Circle of Cysquatch" into "Aqua Dementia", and he sneaks some bonus guitar harmonics on "Sleeping Giant", but where extras are concerned, that's about it. Still, just seeing these knotty songs through an hour and half of entanglements is more than enough with got several thousand watts—and the screams of 4,000 devotees—helping them. The video portion of Brixton spends a not-inconsiderable amount of time behind Brann Dailor, and with good reason; in a band with no shortage of virtuosos, the lithe, batteramming Dailor's the best of the bunch, and he seems to get a good hour into Brixton without breaking a sweat.

There's not much point in rehashing the finer points of the songs from Leviathan and Blood Mountain, Mastodon's take-your-pick classics, both generously represented here; suffice it to say, even after dozens upons dozens of listens, their technical prowess and continued unpredictability still astonish. The Remission material—"Where Strides the Behemoth" and "March of the Fire Ants"—feels particularly fierce, a grinding, thrashing, death metal-imbued ruckus fine-tuned on their early singles and all but perfected on that first LP. They pare down Skye to just "Ghost of Karelia" and its title track, mercifully leaving the 10+ minute slogs and the why-would-you-do-that banjo of "Divinations" for another night.

Again, though, it's Hunter that benefits the most in Brixton. Those songs—rife with classic-rock affectations, finely tuned harmonies, and uncharacteristically pristine production—felt compromised on record. Onstage, they're brought surging to life; the tempos seem turned up a few notches, the production tics are largely lost to the full-on assault, and Hinds and Sanders lend the vocals a gruffness more in line with their earlier work. Hunter detractors (and I count myself among this group) would be right to expect a dip in energy and/or quality when those songs start up, but that's only slightly true; the newer songs help play up the Georgia roots in the older material, while the pre-Hunter wildness ramps up a forward motion even "Bedazzled Fingernails" can't seem to scratch.

Brixton's still dogged by a few of the issues plaguing almost every live album. Turns out, 97 minutes is a hell of a lot of Mastodon, and since they're not exactly the most demonstrative band, getting through the whole thing in a single sitting's not easy without running to the fridge for another beer. Flattering as these performances are to The Hunter, after a few spins of Brixton, the next time you've got an hour and a half to spend on sludge, you're more than likely going to return to that familiar Leviathan/Blood Mountain twofer. But, as a celebration of Mastodon's impressive catalog and incredible live prowess, Brixton can afford to be a little overgenerous. They've been one of metal's sharpest, flat-out exciting bands for more than a decade now, and Brixton plays to their strengths while bowling over any minor missteps from their recent LPs. Brixton ends with the Dailor-sung lighter-flicker "Creature Lives", arguably the weakest of The Hunter's weak spots. A few seconds in, the band are joined by then-tourmates Red Fang and the Dillinger Escape Plan, helping lead the crowd in a massive singalong. It's a real brothers-in-arms moment, exactly the way the song—oddly out of place on record—was meant to be heard. It's a triumphant moment, the last of many on Brixton.