Southern rock. In the pantheon of rock, it goes back to the times of Bo Diddley and includes many rock groups over the decades: Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Band in the 60s, The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd in the 70s, Pantera in the 80s, The Black Crowes in the 90s, and of course the infamous rise of Kid Rock in the 2000s. But somewhere in the late 90s or early 2000s, a strange child of southern rock and metal was being born, calling itself southern metal. Given only about half a paragraph in the wikipedia page for "souther rock," southern metal is simply metal made by people with a southern heritage, usually incorporating elements of southern/outlaw country guitar with sludge metal production. A few early adopters of this style were Clutch, Eyehategod, and Neurosis and they helped influence a new breed of young southern metalheads that were ready to take the music to it's next plateau... Enter Mastodon. In 2002, they blasted through the metal stratosphere with their debut release "Remission," with the chunkiest and thrashiest guitar sounds that could be produced, but full of dexterity and grace. They, along with groups such as Of Mice & Men and Maylene & the Sons of Disaster gave southern metal a brief couple of years of interest before fizzling out. Mastodon is more than just southern metal though. They are well respected and widely listened to metal, the kind of which had been firmly underground and segregated by the elitism inherent in metal fandom. It's hard to find a metalhead that doesn't have at least a few good things to say about the band. Today we're covering one of their most well known and larger than life stories: "Leviathan"... with special guests The Heretic (Nathan Maney) and The Blasphemer (Reis Galvan) and the podcast revival of The Witching Hour...

Coming Up: 10-19-20 Marvin Gaye - What's Goin On

10-26-20 The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium

Watch Nathan Maney play Minecraft on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK75qPqPLMV4siDkF7YXpVw

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