Fans of metal music and its infinite subgenres typically don’t take kindly to bands that leave their harsher roots for a more commercial sound. A softening of sound is traditionally taken as a sign of selling out, losing artistic integrity and hoping for a wider fan base away from the typically insular and selective metal community. 

Whether or not this is a valid gripe is an argument for another day, but it’s a claim that has been lobbed at Mastodon for both its 2011 release The Hunter and its newest, Once More ’Round the Sun. So has the band really quote-unquote sold out? And, more importantly, is its newest release any good? 

Mastodon is arguably the most critically acclaimed and popular metal band in the current music landscape, attracting love from both metal heads and indie bloggers alike. It’s still somewhat of a mystery as to why Mastodon can pull so many fans from disparate worlds, but it’s likely related to how the band continues to reinvent itself with each release while remaining distinctly itself: No matter what, Mastodon is all complex with original guitar lines, lyrics just as likely to be about Moby Dick or Russian history as monsters and death and a mastery of creating interesting atmospheres (an essential part of much of the indie music sphere now). 

Mastodon’s six albums can be roughly divided into three periods. The group’s first two albums, Remission and Leviathan, are pinnacles of sludge metal (chugging, shouted metal with heavy riffs), while the second two, Blood Mountain and Crack the Skye, dip into full-on progressive metal, featuring sung vocals and longer, more intricate songs. 2011’s The Hunter dropped much of the metal influence and stands as an excellent heavy rock album, perfect for blasting down the highway. 

For Once More ’Round the Sun, many fans expected the band to drift further into radio rock territory, and while tracks such as “High Road,” “Once More it ’Round the Sun” and “The Motherload” confirm that hypothesis, the band still demonstrates its musical talent with polyrhythmic riffs and general guitar complexity on tracks like “Chimes at Midnight,” “Asleep in the Deep” and (the strangely-named) “Aunt Lisa.” 

Part of Mastodon’s unique sound even rests in the vocals, which, unlike much of the popular metal of the day, are not the famous death metal growls. The band has no de facto vocalist, with duty switching between three of its four members. None of the band sings especially well, but their voices, distorted and harmonizing over the music, come across as creepy, melodic and quite catchy. 

It is this willingness to break out of common metal tropes that makes Mastodon so successful. What other metal band features a gang vocal line saying “Hey ho, let’s get up and rock and roll,” thrown into an otherwise intense metal track? It works here, somehow. 

Once More ’Round the Sun really serves as a sort of mixtape of Mastodon in all its various sounds: the lumbering darkness of Blood Mountain, the towering strangeness of Crack the Skye and the fist-pumping rock of The Hunter all surface in this release. 

This diversity, coupled with the band’s general inclination to become more accessible, makes Once More an ideal entry point into Mastodon. Even if any individual fan doesn’t like certain tracks, they could easily trace the sounds they like back to particular albums. 

Lyrically, Once More ‘Round the Sun is good, but falters at times. Judging a metal band on its lyrics is often an ill-guided task anyway, but Mastodon has managed to write some intriguing concept albums about content as varied as werewolves, the actual suicide of drummer Brann Dailor’s  sister Skye, Rasputin, paraplegics and swamp monsters. To hear the band sing lines like “You take the high road now/ I’ll take the road below you” and “If you want you can will  it/ You can have it/ I can put it right there in your hands” is a slight disappointment, but the band still manages some cool and weird lines like “Gasoline runs through my veins, so don’t you mess with me/ I couldn’t tame that beast with a handful of meat.” Nothing earth-shattering, but creepy, weird and kind of funny — the Mastodon way. 

Against all odds and precedence, Mastodon has  somehow managed to piece together an album that’s still identifiably Mastodon and still quite good, but also considerably more commercial than past releases. Of course, the hardcore metal heads probably won’t appreciate the change, but fans of any of the last three Mastodon albums will find a lot to like here. It’s not Mastodon’s best release, and it probably heralds a new Mastodon that won’t return to their heavier sound, but Once More ’Round the Sun is a good rock/metal album from a very talented band.