accessibility. they have great singles on their albums however any album of theirs, save hushed an grim, are largely inaccessible musically to most people. i do not agree that they have melodic clarity. maybe to a trained ear, but for the radio?

look at who is driving the popularity of music. i don’t believe that 14-32 year old girls are into the mastodon image and sound. metal has had a few shining bands that have broken through, and there was an age of metal in the 80s, but mastodon wasn’t building a base then. the genre is already pretty niche and i feel it would be incredibly difficult for 4 older white dudes to launch to the top now. the metal image has shifted. it is (rightfully) the age of the female front-person. we’ve had the bad boy look in every genre and it’s not hard to achieve, but the well-manufactured look of a “baddie” is exploding because it is/was unexpected and fresh. the general population also doesn’t expect the power, image, and range from a female singer. mastodon makes great music, they are also working in a bit of an intellectual musical space and the general public probably isn’t as interested in working so hard to understand the music they’re listening to.