Emperor of Sand: Mastodon’s Desert Elegy Still Cuts Deep

Mastodon’s seventh album, Emperor of Sand (2017), is a record about survival, loss, and the desert of the title — a place where the band’s characters wander, cursed, toward an inevitable end. It is also a deliberate synthesis of everything the Atlanta quartet has done before: the crushing prog-metal of their early years fused with the melodic hooks that made their later records radio-friendly. The result is their most focused and emotionally raw work in a decade, a 51-minute journey that refuses to let up.

Walking the Dunes: Track by Track

The album opens with Sultan’s Curse, a menacing, mid-tempo stomp that sets the desert tone immediately. Its riffs are patient, almost slithering, and the chorus lands with a weight that feels like a verdict. Show Yourself follows with the catchiest moment on the record — a clean, almost anthemic hook that would not sound out of place on a rock radio playlist, yet it never sacrifices the band’s signature heaviness.

Precious Stones and Steambreather form a strong middle pair. The former is a tense, chugging number that builds slowly, while the latter is a standout: a slow-burning, atmospheric track with a vocal melody that aches. It is the emotional heart of the record, and it earns every one of its five minutes. Roots Remain, the longest track before the finale, stretches past six minutes and uses the space well, shifting between crushing verses and a soaring, almost psychedelic chorus.

Word to the Wise is a direct, aggressive cut that trims the fat and hits hard, while Ancient Kingdom brings a slightly more theatrical, almost progressive edge. Clandestiny and Andromeda are the weakest links — both are serviceable, but they feel like filler between the album’s stronger statements, lacking the memorable hooks of their neighbors.

Scorpion Breath snaps the record back to attention with a raw, abrasive edge that recalls the band’s heavier origins. The closer, Jaguar God, is the true epic: a seven-minute, multi-part suite that builds from a clean, almost mournful intro into a crushing, triumphant finale. It is the perfect summary of the album’s ambition.

The Verdict

What makes Emperor of Sand work is not just the songwriting, but the weight behind it. The record carries an unusually raw emotional depth tied to the band members’ experiences with cancer, and that grief is audible. This is not a concept record in the traditional sense — it is a personal one, dressed in desert mythology.

The production is clean but not sterile, and the performances are tight throughout. The dual vocal approach gives the record a dynamic range that keeps the 51 minutes from dragging. The lesser tracks — Clandestiny, Andromeda, Precious Stones — are not bad; they are simply overshadowed by the peaks around them.

Mastodon have never been an easy band to categorize, and Emperor of Sand does not change that. It is heavy, melodic, progressive, and accessible in equal measure. It is a record that looks backward and forward at once, and it succeeds at both.

Metacritic’s aggregate score sits at 78/100.

album review · Atlanta metal · Emperor of Sand · Mastodon · prog metal