Crack the Skye

Bill Kelliher has called this the first time Mastodon ever had an actual producer. Brendan O'Brien produced and mixed at Southern Tracks in Atlanta, and played keyboards himself, an instrument the band had never worked with before. The album is named for Brann Dailor's sister Skye, who took her own life at fourteen; Dailor has said it was something he had been dealing with for twenty years. Brent Hinds, recovering from a head injury sustained in 2007, wrote much of the material at home on an acoustic guitar, and Scott Kelly of Neurosis takes a vocal on the title track. The Billboard 200 dated April 11, 2009 had it new at No. 11, credited to Reprise/Warner; Blood Mountain had peaked at No. 32. That October, Mastodon filmed the album performed live in its entirety at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago.