Mastodon Album Art and Teaser + Opeth news!

It's got three jaws and eight ears - are you surprised?

Good news for Mastodon fans - the album art for the forthcoming album The Hunter has been revealed and it's just as head-fuckingly awesome as all of the other offerings over the past decade.

Mastodon Simplify the Formula

With news and speculation surrounding Opeth's forthcoming album, Christmas struck again this week with news of sludge/prog-metal behemoths Mastodon's new album, also due sometime this Autumn. The album has been christened The Hunter and in an interview with the Terrorizer website, the band hinted that this was a reference to the death of bandmember Brent Hinds' brother, himself a hunter, last year.

5 Books I Couldn't Do Without

A good book is rich, entertaining, or even informative; A truly great book is all of these and also shapes the way you perceive yourself and the rest of the world. Great books shapes whole cultures, personalities and attitudes towards life itself.

I was never a very good reader as a child, preferring to keep my hands glued to a SNES, Playstation or N64 controller. The only masterpiece I ever knew back then was Mario Kart. But as I got older, towards my late teens, I began to appreciate the value of a truly classic read (although I do still frequent video games consoles more often than I probably should), and this simple enjoyment of reading the result of someones experiences and energy, pored in ink onto a few hundred small pages, is possibly what guided me towards completing a degree in English & History. The words within a magnificent book are skillfully tailored to paint a canvas so spectacular, you can't help yourself but be swept up into their mesmerising spell. So in no particular order, in homage to some of the very best books that I have been lucky to dip my mind into, I bring you 5 books that without, I wouldn't be the same person you see here today.