Mastodon

MASTODON
Leviathan
(Relapse)

Top three reasons that senioritis is a persistent epidemic for precollegiate American scholars: increased alcohol and drug abuse, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. Next to The Scarlet Letter, the lumbering Moby Dick is the most dreaded entry on any teenager's required reading list. Luckily, in an ADD-afflicted burnout's wet dream come true, a killer up-and-coming art-metal band just wrote an entire album from the point of view of Captain Ahab. Amusingly bizarre narrative concept notwithstanding, Leviathan is one of the genre's must-hear summer tent poles, thanks to the tempo-shifting stoner-thrash adventures detailed in Mastodon's 2002 full-length debut, Remission. So chuckle if you must as Brent Hinds and Troy Sanders bark Melville paraphrases like "This ivory leg is what compels me." The musicianship on Leviathan storms right past "evolution" to "breakthrough," rendering their exemplary work of just two years ago obsolete. Until now, the Atlanta-based quartet's lone liability was Brann Dailor's otherworldly-to-the-point-of-distraction kit slaying; he's dialed down the freestyle fill flurries in favor of structural fortitude, and the riffing has caught up big time. "Megalodon" is the major head-turner, advancing from a series of crippling, staccato jabs to a lone, twanging country lick, then erupting into a nasty industrial sprint, a la Psalm 69 era ministry. "Blood and Thunder" and "Iron Tusk" offer condensed, uncompromised takes on the hypermasculine Remission strut, and the 13-minute-plus "Hearts Alive" is a bold claim to Metallica's Opus God throne, cramming countless wild, proficient, somehow nongratuitous solos into its coda. Almost makes me want to re-enroll in high school and submit a new senior thesis. Almost. ANDREW BONAZELLI

MONSTER MAGNET
Monolithic Baby!
(SPV)

Something is harshing Dave Wyndorf's buzz. On Monolithic Baby!, Monster Magnet's vocalist and co-founder seems both listless and restless, as though the sometimes-reluctant Lord of the Infernal Domains shtick he's been tweaking since the band's 1990 self-titled debut were starting to feel even more constricting than his trademark lederhosen. Maybe it's the company he keeps: Baby!'s numerous close encounters of the very fleeting kind seem little more than hastily written vehicles for the stoner rock pioneer's obligatory boasting and bemused revulsion, along with the kind of lust that comes and goes depending on the rhyming requirements of the next line. Consider "Unbroken (Hotel Baby)." Over a riff that hints at recent liaisons with Randy Bachman and Tom Scholz, Wyndbag growls, "Come on down to the hotel, baby/I can be what you want me to be/You can choke on your own medication/I can watch myself on TV/Oh yeah!" What band does he think he's in, anyway—Head East—Ludacris would at least make time to consummate before checkout. But even at his most dysfunctional, Bongdorf finds a place for humor: The first line of "Unbroken"'s chorus is expertly hijacked from Every Mother's Son's "Come on Down to My Boat." Still, the protagonist of that squeaky-clean 1967 hit had enough caulking compound in his gun to dream of sailing away with a cute fisherman's daughter whose dad kept her tied to the dock while he was working. Wyndorf just wants to surf Jersey cable while his date turns blue. That the band's cover of the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs" displays a depth of feeling that easily transcends the original probably has something to do with the fact that it's the only song on Monolithic Baby! where Wyndorf's performance suggests that he might actually be working from life. ROD SMITH

Monster Magnet play Neumo's at 8 p.m. Sun., Sept. 5. $15 adv.

THE KILLERS
Hot Fuss
(Island)

They like New Order so much they named themselves after the fictional band in their "Crystal" video. They like U2 so much they've publicly aspired to produce the next "Where the Streets Have No Name." They like the Strokes so much they, um, dress exactly like them. But stripped of their crushes, who exactly are the Killers? Is it even fair to ask with just one unfortunately titled album to go on, an album that implicitly boasts that they're a wink-wink self-promotional amalgam of hip influences? At the very least, the fashionable Vegas quartet is responsible for two breathtakingly catchy now-wave singles, the first an alternately peppy and mopey riff on jealousy ("Mr. Brightside"), the second full-speed-ahead disco sass ("Somebody Told Me"). The remainder of Fuss is a tasteful, if predictable blend of the Killers' aforementioned forebears. Vocalist Brandon Flowers squeezes a little Cockney pulp into his Casablancas, impassively recollecting "fights on the prah-men-aude out in the rain." He effectively channels the persona of the disheveled barfly player who's never had a real, identifiable emotion about a relationship in his life. Thankfully, Flowers is so consumed with this role that, for the most part, he lays off the cheap revivalist synth that practically collapses "On Top." Guitarist Dave Keuning has yet to develop the effortless signature simplicity of Albert Hammond Jr., but his restrained figures lend much-needed gravity to a band still fleshing hype from identity. Fuss ain't all Killer, but there's certainly no filler. ANDREW BONAZELLI