Thanks to the sonic sledgehammer that was 2009’s Crack The Skye, the bar was set perilously high for Mastodon’s fifth long player. Unsurprisingly, the Atlantan prog-metallers aren’t exactly the types to feel fear, and with their latest effort they’ve delivered more than anyone bargained for. The biggest surprise this time round is the fact they’ve eschewed the sprawling, concept-driven format of their previous three releases, and focused their efforts on carving relatively concise (and yet equally-ferocious) riff-orientated missives. As drummer Brian Dailor puts it, on The Hunter the quartet come over like "a super-heavy Led Zeppelin". Not bad, eh?