Mastodon’s ninth album, Marrow Deep, is presented as a powerful, defiant response to recent personal losses, including former guitarist Brent Hinds’s death and drummer Brann Dailor’s mother’s death. The review finds that, while grief runs through its dense and emotionally charged music, the album avoids becoming bleak by turning pain into a varied, ambitious and ultimately resilient record.

The Atlanta band’s remaining core members are joined by touring guitarist Nick Johnston and keyboard player João Nogueira, with Hinds’s previously distinctive third vocal presence noticeably absent. Tracks range from the furious ‘A Vampire’s Demeanour’ to the euphoric shifts of ‘Poisonous Weapons’, while Geezer Butler contributes bass to ‘The Vanishing’ and Clutch’s Neil Fallon guests on ‘The Three Fates’; Dailor has linked ‘The Vanishing’ to imagining reunion with his late mother and sister.