Released on October 29, 2021, Hushed and Grim didn’t reinvent Mastodon — it revealed them.
After two decades of mythic storytelling and progressive metal precision, the Atlanta quartet turned inward, creating their most human record yet. It’s not a concept album in the traditional sense; it’s a monument to loss, reflection, and endurance — a double album that mourns, heals, and breathes in real time.
Where Emperor of Sand (2017) used mortality as metaphor, Hushed and Grim strips away the distance. It was written in the shadow of tragedy, following the death of longtime manager and friend Nick John, and that grief saturates every corner of the record. But this isn’t a eulogy. It’s a ritual of remembrance.
Mastodon have never sounded this vulnerable — or this vast.
From Myths to Mortality: The Weight Beneath the Waves
Since their earliest days, Mastodon’s music has been steeped in myth — leviathans, mountains, labyrinths — external metaphors for internal struggle. Hushed and Grim turns those metaphors inward. The beasts are gone; what remains are ghosts.
From the opening track, “Pain with an Anchor,” the band makes its intent clear. There’s no bombast, no prelude — just an immediate plunge into atmosphere and ache. Troy Sanders’ voice carries both exhaustion and defiance, while Brann Dailor’s drums tumble like restless thought.
Each song unfolds like a fragment of memory. “The Crux” seethes with frustration, “Sickle and Peace” drifts in eerie meditation, and “Skeleton of Splendor” feels almost sacred — a slow-motion prayer wrapped in distortion. Brent Hinds’ guitar solos no longer feel like explosions; they’re elegies. They rise, ache, and dissipate like smoke.
Lyrically, the record reads like a journal cracked open — full of loss, doubt, and small flashes of light that refuse to die out. Mastodon have often hidden behind allegory; here, they simply speak.
The Shape of Sorrow
If earlier Mastodon albums built worlds, Hushed and Grim builds atmosphere. It’s sprawling yet intimate, deliberate yet instinctive — the sound of a band creating space rather than filling it.
The group’s trademark interplay remains intact: Bill Kelliher’s dense rhythm work anchors Hinds’ wandering leads, while Sanders and Dailor shape the emotional core through voice and groove. But the aggression has shifted. Where Crack the Skye soared toward cosmic transcendence, Hushed and Grim sinks deeper into the soil, finding beauty in weight.
“More Than I Could Chew” balances sludge and sorrow with effortless control. “Teardrinker” is deceptively uplifting, its chorus shimmering through the haze of mourning. “Pushing the Tides,” one of the more direct tracks, brings back their familiar bite — a reminder that Mastodon’s heaviness has always been as emotional as it is sonic.
Each member brings something distinctly human to the table. Hinds plays like a man remembering how to breathe. Kelliher’s tone feels chiseled from stone. Sanders’ bass murmurs with warmth beneath the surface. And Dailor’s drumming — a mix of fury and fragility — ties everything together, the heartbeat of an album that never stops moving even when it aches to rest.
Sound and Structure: The Cathedral of Grief
Clocking in at nearly 90 minutes, Hushed and Grim is Mastodon’s longest album by far — a double record that feels like both confession and catharsis. That length could have been indulgent, but instead it feels necessary. Grief takes time, and this record gives it room to sprawl.
Produced by David Bottrill, the album’s sonic design is expansive yet earthy. The mix breathes. Guitars shimmer without smothering the low end; the drums sound massive but never intrusive. There’s air between the instruments, allowing the emotion to radiate.
Bottrill, known for his work with Tool and King Crimson, understands dynamics — and Hushed and Grim thrives on them. “Gigantium” closes the record not with ferocity but with acceptance, its slow build from sorrow to transcendence encapsulating everything Mastodon have become.
You don’t just hear this album; you inhabit it. It’s a landscape of echoing halls and candlelit corners, every note flickering with loss and endurance.
The Sound of Survival
For all its sadness, Hushed and Grim is not a bleak record. It’s a reminder that grief and growth are inseparable — that to mourn is to remember that you loved. Beneath the layers of distortion and atmosphere, the album pulses with quiet hope.
Mastodon have evolved past the need for narrative conceits. The dragons and mountains were always metaphors for what was happening inside them — now, they’ve stripped away the symbols. What’s left is the truth: four musicians facing mortality, memory, and the need to keep creating.
And that’s what makes Hushed and Grim powerful. It’s not polished perfection; it’s raw humanity. Even the imperfections — the moments where songs bleed into one another, where emotion overrides structure — feel deliberate. Life doesn’t resolve neatly, and neither does grief.
This is Mastodon’s Time, their moment of reflection after years of transformation and turmoil.
Legacy: The Sound of Grown Men Facing the Dark
In the larger scope of Mastodon’s career, Hushed and Grim is a milestone. It’s not the firestorm of Leviathan, nor the psychedelic voyage of Crack the Skye. It’s something rarer: an honest reckoning.
Few metal bands age gracefully; even fewer confront aging itself. Mastodon do both. They’ve reached the point where technical skill serves emotion, not ego. The virtuosity is still there, but it’s wielded in service of expression rather than exhibition.
A decade from now, Hushed and Grim may stand as the band’s most important record — not because it’s the heaviest or the most experimental, but because it’s the most human. It’s an album that acknowledges pain without letting it define the band, that finds meaning in mourning, and that dares to see beauty in the aftermath.
Mastodon once built empires of sound. Here, they build memorials.
Final Verdict: 9 / 10
Hushed and Grim is Mastodon stripped of myth but filled with spirit — a work of endurance, empathy, and emotional gravity. It’s heavy in a way that goes beyond volume or distortion; it’s heavy with meaning.
The riffs still crush, the solos still soar, but the heart of the record lies in its restraint, its vulnerability, its willingness to feel.
This is what happens when a band stops trying to outrun its own history and instead learns to live with it.
With Hushed and Grim, Mastodon don’t chase legacy — they confront mortality and create something transcendent in the process.
The noise fades, the echoes linger — and what’s left is nothing less than truth.
