MASTODON

Live at the Aragon

[Reprise]

Prog-metal juggernaut Mastodon’s first-ever live album, a CD/DVD set recorded in 2009 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, offers an agreeably straightforward (if abbreviated) account of the band’s bruising stage show. The quartet plows through its most recent concept album, Crack the Skye, in its entirety and throws in a few oldies and a cover of the Melvins’ “The Bit.” The members’ performances are uniformly instrumentally dazzling, although the frequency of off-key vocals is distracting (even so, points for not cleaning up those moments in postproduction). The hidden prize here is the DVD extra Crack the Skye: The Movie, which features the elaborate video production seen playing behind the band onstage, set to the studio version of the album. It’s an artful montage by director Robert “Roboshobo” Schober that offers a sumptuous companion to Crack the Skye’s far-flung story of astral travel, wormholes and Russian mysticism. –Chris Neal