YMMV / Mastodon

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• Broken Base:
  • Pretty much everything after Crack the Skye has split the fanbase, with one half liking their experimentation in Lighter and Softer prog metal (Crack the Skye in particular rivaling Leviathan for their best album) and the other half just wishing they'd get back to the screaming, dark, sludge metal from Remission and Leviathan, while a third group is fine with them no longer being a heavy band but would rather have them go back to their proggy mid-era material instead of sticking with their current stoner rock sound. Once More 'Round the Sun seems to be shaping up to be the next target of this (especially "The Motherload".)
  • On that note, Emperor of Sand. While even its detractors will generally agree that it is their best since Crack the Skye, it's still divisive like the rest of their modern material. It's either a fantastic return to form that manages to capture the essence of what people loved about Crack the Skye, or it's a piss-poor attempt to recapture that album's magic.
  • Whose vocals were better, Eric Saner's on the demo or the ones recorded by Troy and Brent for the recut version? It's widely agreed that Saner's vocals wouldn't fit the band's current style (or probably even that of Remission), but it's not widely agreed who was a better fit for the band's earliest material.
• Epic Riff: Most of them, honestly. "Blood and Thunder" stands out even above the rest of the band's catalogue for this, though.
  • Pretty much every song on the demo or the first four albums has at least one of them, but "The Last Baron" particularly stands out for basically being one continuous series of them. Granted, they drop in a few seconds of the Epic Riff from "YYZ" by Rush - twice, as if to say, "Yes, you're damn right we just did that" - but the rest of them are the band's own work and are stunning.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: They're one of the most successful metal bands around at the moment, so it was inevitable that they would draw this response. The Hunter and Once More 'Round the Sun have gotten a lot of heat from some fans for their more accessible, hard rock influenced sound.
• Memetic Mutation: Around late 2022, many memes started popping up about the band's subreddit being mistaken for the social networking app of the same name, which grew in popularity as an alternative to Twitter after Elon Musk's takeover of the latter.
  • SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER!^note  A popular comic from 2008, portraying a man unhappy with a girl he likes having a boyfriend who he perceives as a whale and killing him. The comic has "Blood and Thunder"'s lyrics around it. It also made a resurgence in the 2020s, particularly 2022.
• Nightmare Fuel: "Bladecatcher". It's almost a Melt-Banana song.
• Signature Song: "Blood and Thunder" or "Oblivion", depending on who you ask. To a lesser extent, "High Road" and "The Motherload".
• Stuck in Their Shadow: Bill Kelliher is the rhythm guitarist and the only member who doesn't sing. Naturally, he doesn't as much recognition as the others.
• Tear Jerker: Have their own page, and boy have they earned it.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The instrumental "Pendulous Skin" is a strange musical example. A causal listener would assume that the song features Troy and Brent scatting over the song's instrumental backing. However, the "vocal" sounds are apparently entirely synthesized, and there are no vocals on the song. The resulting product sounds uncannily like vocals, but a listener will strain to understand what is being said - because, of course, nothing is being said.

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