Get these tickets while they're hot, metal fans: Mastodon announced it'll be heading on a tour through the United States during late Spring, and they'll be bringing European critical darlings Gojira and Kvelertak with them.
We warn you in advance that the tour will be a brief one. The band is spending February and March in Australia before returning to the United States for 13 gigs, although they'll be evenly spaced across the country. The band will open on April 29 at the Roseland in Portland, OR and work its way east, before heading back west to close the tour at Ohio's Rock on The Range festival. The only gig the group has announced following ROTR is an early June date in Hamburg.
This raises the question of how long fans will have to wait to hear the band's sixth album. Mastodon's last release was 2011's The Hunter, and the group has seemed pretty sure that the new album will come out during 2014. Rumors have reported that the band was putting the "finishing touches" on the album, and that it would be called Killer Be Killed (although that hasn't been officially confirmed). The band's previous four albums have covered a wide range of tastes-generally some happy medium between thrash, sludge and prog-but all share one factor in common: critical acclaim.
That's something it shares with the openers on its upcoming tour. Gojira received a bevy of positive feedback for its 2012 album L'Enfant Sauvage, and Kvelertak garnered praise for its 2013 release Meir (the song "Snipelisk" from that album was this writer's no. 5 track of the year).
