I'm just listening to Mastodon "Live at the Aragon" for the first time and it's great, except for Brent's vocals. The guy is terrible. He goes off key, has no range, has a very irritating nasal high pitched singing voice, and I bet he forgets the lyrics to songs. He's a fucking awesome guitarist but he can't sing. Brann and Troy are pretty good, and they should do all the singing, or Brent should take some serious singing classes. Or they should find a singer for this new musical direction they're going for.

...my god...the last baron is playing now...he's destroying the song!!! I hate you brent!!

Agreed that he's horrible and has no business singing when there's two perfectly adequate singers in the band. The worst is when they try to do three part harmonies.

I actually don't mind the nasal quality of his voice, and when it's on record (presumably auto-tuned to high heaven) it brings a distinct quality. But seeing these guys live (at least twice on the "let's play crack the sky all the way through" tour) really brought it home how BAD their vocals are. Especially when Baroness were opening, doing a really similar thing but doing it right.

I will say that the older, heavier stuff sounded great.

IMO the band that best executes the "heavy, technical beard-metal with vocal harmonies" thing is Intronaut, by a landslide. And they're not even from Atlanta.

yeah, that shit HAS to be auto-tuned on record, it just has to be.

the answer is obviously more Troy.

I liked the whole package when I saw them live and wondered what all the fuss was about around that time. Picked up the new live album recently and yep, it rules. The guy really just has a distinctive voice.

Per the recent Invisible Oranges interview with Brent, he does most of the singing on the new album they just finished. And he apparently wrote most of it as well. This was the case with 'Crack the Skye', so it sounds like the other guys have let him carry the baton. I'm alright with it, I thought CtS was awesome.

he's OK on the album (just OK, not great, and Mastodon should have a great vocalist because they're all great musicians), but he's voice was auto-tuned heavily. Live, he sucks...

Hinds' gruffer vocals on Leviathan and Blood Mountain were solid and they translated well live...can't say the same for his clean signing on Crack the Skye though...I listen to my instrumental copy of that album a lot more often than I listen to my copy with vocals...on the Aragon album, Hinds' vocal lapses were laid bare (he singlehandedly butchered "Quintessence"), and I though the encore tunes from their back catalogue sounded far better than the Crack the Skye stuff, b/c the band was firing on all cylinders - including vocals...I'll always listen to Mastodon's albums on the strength of their musical prowess alone, but Hinds' clean vocals - eh...

I was an assistant engineer when they recorded their version of the Melvins 'The Bit' for a compilation.

Brent was cracking Budweiser at 10am but he nailed his vocal take with no help from technology.

....but that was in 2004 though and, well, a lot has happened to Mr. Brent since then.

Well do we have any other options?

hes starting to sound like ozzy. i think they should just find a singer

Or just let Troy do the lion's share of the vocals as he did on Remission and Leviathan, which remains their two best albums in my opinion...

This, just never saw them live so can't really chime in on the sound of his voice live. I think his voice makes the recordings though, sounds like a gremlin moaning over the instruments. In a good way

They would do best going back to the screaming. Troy is starting to ape King Buzzo too much, and Brann makes for a nice touch, but he obviously can't sing and drum like a madman all the time. I feel like they could return to the healthy middle-ground of the two that they had on Leviathan and Blood Mountain and still go on in the direction they're going.

think about this. every song that they do with scott kelly is fucking epic. they should let scott kelly sing exclusively on their new album.

At least they pulled it off on Letterman.