We like them better than last time…

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Anthony Easton: This is what happens when the Allman Brothers start taking meth. 
[8]

Alfred Soto: Its earnest churn belies the charm of the incoherent title hook.  
[5]

Brad Shoup: A little harrowing, a little more funny (I can’t wait to fill out my Opening Couplet of 2011 ballot). Manages to equal the best pop songwriting of Queens of the Stone Age, while putting on more muscle than Homme’s been willing to add since Rated R. The middle eight/solo section is a little sodden, but like roots through earth, our boys deftly punch through it with that knotty riff, Ozzy-twirling-his-handlebar vocals, and tons of fills. I look forward to its ascendance on rock radio, as well as the plaudits due its titular phrase: that fucker’s delicious as a rhyme and an aphorism.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Queens of the Stone Age with hair on their chests; The Blair Witch Project by a bunch of stoners; a dumb Internet thing taken exactly as seriously as it deserves.
[6]

Hazel Robinson: Mastodon’s new album is all about muscular thumping, a chest-beating roar of grief after Brent Hinds’ brother; as a whole, there’s an epic space laser battle arc that seems interrupted by the sudden introduction of all this emotion. “Curl Of The Burl” in isolation is a storming, Queens Of The Stone Age-style prog thump, like parts of The Czar when they found a groove to carve up and down on. The hefty emotional weight of it, though and lack of distancing concept means it’s sludgier, more in your face and less pleased with its own fiddliness. For a band that’s mostly dealt in fantastic stories, this is close to the bone and tight in the chest, clipped to 3:30 instead of a sprawling quarter of an hour but despite a bit of initial uncertainty on my part, it’s still all there. Condensed and reduced; brutalist prog.
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