Gallery, ReviewDitch This MagazineDecember 05, 2024gallery, live, melbourne, Odin Imaging, Nathan Goldsworthy, odin imaging, Northcote Theatre, Kerry King, Good Things Festival, Karry King

Mastodon + Kerry King @ Northcote Theatre 04-12-24

Gallery, ReviewDitch This MagazineDecember 05, 2024gallery, live, melbourne, Odin Imaging, Nathan Goldsworthy, odin imaging, Northcote Theatre, Kerry King, Good Things Festival, Karry King

photos: Nathan Goldsworthy @odin.imaging

The Northcote Theatre had the quiet hum of anticipation before the storm, the kind of quiet that gnaws at the edges of your nerves and tells you something big is coming. The floorboards beneath my feet seemed to shiver in time with the restless crowd. And then he stepped out—Kerry King, a legend and a scowl that could split the Earth.

Behind him stood a wall of Marshall stacks so imposing it might as well have been a castle built to keep the world at bay. When the first chords hit, they weren’t just notes—they were seismic waves, rattling ribs and threatening to blow the dust off history itself.

King’s set was a storm—thick with Slayer songs that had the crowd tearing at the edges of their sanity. When the extended drum intro to “Raining Blood” began, the room held its breath. It wasn’t music anymore; it was a conjuring. The pit erupted into a cyclone of limbs and sweat, a chaos so primal it felt like the building itself might crumble. Security stood frozen at the edges, their faces a mix of boredom and fear, until someone yelled, “Let’s give them something to complain about!” And the crowd obliged.

There was a moment of somber beauty—a tribute to the late Paul Di’Anno of Iron Maiden. King and his band tore into Killers with a ferocity that felt alive, even as it mourned the dead. It was a reminder that music is eternal, a bridge between the living and the lost.

Then, after the chaos, came Mastodon.

Mastodon didn’t just perform; they descended. From the moment they took the stage, the Northcote Theatre was no longer a venue. It was an underwater cathedral, a realm where the crushing weight of riffs and rhythm mirrored the depths of the sea. They weren’t playing Leviathan; they were conjuring it.

Opening with “Blood and Thunder,” the room transformed. It wasn’t just the music—it was the sheer audacity of playing their 20-year-old magnum opus in its entirety, without hesitation, without restraint. The guitars roared like a storm ripping through the hull of a doomed ship. Brent Hinds’ and Bill Kelliher’s interplay felt alive, each note biting and tearing like the jaws of Moby Dick itself.

The lighting was hypnotic. Deep greens and blues cascaded across the stage, the lasers cutting through like the beams of searchlights from a phantom lighthouse warning of unseen dangers. At times, it felt as if the walls of the theatre had melted away, replaced by endless, churning waves. The atmosphere was suffocating and expansive all at once—a paradox that Mastodon has mastered.

Troy Sanders prowled the stage like a sea captain possessed, his basslines not just anchoring the chaos but amplifying it. His vocals, shared with Hinds and drummer Brann Dailor, brought texture and dynamism, like a chorus of voices crying out from the deep. And Dailor—what can you say about a drummer like him? His kit was a tempest, each cymbal crash like the scream of a sinking ship, every fill a defiant gasp for air.

As the band navigated through tracks like “I Am Ahab,” “Seabeast,” and “Aqua Dementia,” the audience seemed mesmerized, transported to a world where every note told a story of struggle, resilience, and the inexorable pull of nature’s fury. When they reached “Hearts Alive,” the room felt heavy, as if everyone was sharing the weight of the leviathan’s tale.

Mastodon closed that section of the set with “Joseph Merrick,” the haunting instrumental leaving the crowd in a reflective, almost meditative state. The applause that followed wasn’t just loud; it was reverent. This wasn’t a band celebrating a 20-year-old album; this was a band proving why it’s still a cornerstone of modern metal, a band that takes you somewhere else entirely and leaves you breathless in the process.

When the lights finally came up, the crowd looked like survivors of a shipwreck—exhausted but exhilarated, baptized by the sheer force of Mastodon’s performance. If Kerry King’s set was a storm, Mastodon’s was the ocean itself: vast, terrifying, and utterly unstoppable.