Kitchen Feedback

I love my music loud.

Not necessarily at an ear-destroying volume, although my younger self certainly experimented with that. I mean loud in spirit. Loud guitars. Loud drums. Loud choruses. The kind of music that arrives with enough energy to shake loose whatever has been weighing on your mind.

Which is why I immediately dropped everything I was listening to when Beartooth and Mastodon both released new albums two days ago.

Sorry, everyone and everything else. The queue can wait.

Like many people, I’ve spent parts of this year trying to rediscover who I am outside of work, responsibilities and the endless cycle of deadlines. Somewhere along the way, I realised that some of the things that made me happiest had quietly fallen by the wayside.

Rock music was one of them.

Running was another.

Neither will solve life’s problems. A thirty-minute run won’t magically improve your career prospects. A Beartooth breakdown won’t pay your bills. A Mastodon riff won’t clear your inbox.

What they can do, however, is provide a little breathing room.

A little perspective.

A reminder of who you were before life became so complicated.

For me, getting back into running and reconnecting with the music that shaped my younger years has helped me slowly burn away a rather significant burnout.

Not all at once.

Just bit by bit.

One run at a time.

One album at a time.

That’s perhaps why these two releases arrived at the perfect moment.

Beartooth continues to deliver exactly what made so many of us fans in the first place: massive hooks, cathartic energy and the feeling that frontman Caleb Shomo is somehow screaming on behalf of everyone who has ever had a difficult week.

Mastodon, meanwhile, remain one of metal’s most consistently adventurous bands. Few groups can combine technical musicianship, ambitious songwriting and sheer heaviness quite the way they do.

One album feels like a shot of adrenaline.

The other feels like a journey.

Both were exactly what I needed.

So this week’s New Music Friday recommendation is simple.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, overwhelmed or disconnected from the things you love, perhaps revisit an old passion.

It doesn’t have to be metal.

It doesn’t have to be running.

It just has to be something that reminds you of yourself.

As for me, I’ll be over here with my headphones on, pretending that a double bill of Beartooth and Mastodon isn’t the musical equivalent of comfort food.

New Albums

Beartooth — Pure Ecstasy

Mastodon — Marrow Deep

Sometimes the best therapy comes with distorted guitars, screams and banging drums.