Mastodon's anticipated fifth album The Hunter may not be released for several more months but the ever popular Atlanta heavy metal band's label Reprise/Warner have just unveiled the forthcoming album's arwork (above) which was by done by contemporary American folk artist AJ Fosik.  Still in production the band has announced that new album tracks will include the songs "Blasteroids," "All the Heavy Lifting," "The Octopus Has No Friends," "Stargasm," and "Curl Of The Burl." Slated for a late Summer/early Fall 2011 release  The Hunter is the follow up to their March 2009 studio album Crack the Skye and their CD/DVD live concert package Live At The Aragon  which was released in March this year.

The members of Mastodon are longtime fans of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. In 2007 they performed the opening song ("Cut You Up with a Linoleum Knife") of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, and more recently they contributed to the Adult Swim the previously unreleased song "Deathbound." The song, which is from the Crack The Skye sessions, can be found for free download on adultswim.com.  The Mastodon track as well as the video clip is part of the ten week, 2011 Adult Swim Singles Program. This summer the band is part of the Sonisphere Festival touring Europe. For more touring and general band info visit the Mastodon website.  And below is the just released official album trailer video featuring the new album track "Black Tongue."

1) Iron Maiden Flight 666 DVD

2) Metallica Death Magnetic CD/LP

3) Mastodon Crack The Skye CD/LP

4) Metal: A Headbangers Journey DVD

5) Nyktalgia Peisithanatos CD/LP

If, like me, you suspected that heavy metal music had been going through a bit of a renaissance in recent years and that the decades old genre born out of hard rock in the late 60's/early 70's seems more popular than ever these days, you would be correct, according to longtime metal fan and Amoeba employee Stevil. "The state of metal is healthier than ever. Plus it is more diversified than it has ever been," confirmed Stevil, who works at the San Francisco Amoeba Music, and who has been a dedicated metal fan since the early 80's -- a time when the genre, while popular with certain crossover bands, was generally not nearly as widely accepted as today. "It's cool and acceptable to like metal these days. That's good," said Stevil. He recalled the bygone era when he first got into the genre, when it had a certain "excitement and camaraderie" due to being a relatively smaller and more insular scene. "It was like a huge worldwide gang," reminisced Stevil, noting that, "Nowadays there's a lot of bands, a lot more bands, but with more and more fractured sub-genres" beyond the once standard classic, thrash, and black metal musical divisions which remain his personal favorite types of metal. "A lot of bands have come over from the hardcore punk scene, so there is a whole new fanbase to it, a wider fanbase than ever."

5 Disc Player (fancy!):

1. Lena Willemark and Ale Moller - Nordan


3. Mastodon - LEVIATHAN

4. earth - hibernaculum