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Mastodon’s most recent offering is their fourth full-length album Crack The Skye. The album saw its release on 24th March 2009 and entered the Billboard 200 at number 11. Brendan O’Brien produced the album. It also features Scott Kelly of Neurosis as a guest musician on the title track.

Guitarist Bill Kelliher confirmed the album to be about an ‘outer body experience’ which looks at the concepts of astral travel, wormholes, Stephen Hawking’s theories and the spiritual realm. The album follows a quadriplegic who learned to astrally project and on his journey he flew too close to the sun, burning his umbilical cord which connected him to his body and he flew into oblivion.. At the same time in Czarist Russia, Rasputin and his cult were channeling spirits and brought the quadriplegic to their time. He goes on to explain his situation and foretells the assassination of Rasputin. Inevitably Rasputin is assassinated and guides the quadriplegic back to his body.

Drummer Brann Dailor has also said that "Crack the Skye" is meant as a homage to his sister, Skye Dailor, who committed suicide at age 14.

Blood Mountain, the group's third album, their first for Reprise Records isn't just unconventional, it's surreal, progressive and unrepentantly heavy. Blood Mountain is a brain-teasing concept album, telling the story of a quest to ascend Blood Mountain to find a crystal skull, reach the top and insert the skull inside the band members' own heads in order to eradicate "reptile brain" and transport them to the next phase of human evolution.

Psychedelic imagery notwithstanding, Blood Mountain is ultimately a metaphor for the obstacles and triumphs Mastodon have encountered since they began their musical crusade. The band formed in 2000 shortly after ex-Lethargy and ex-Today Is The Day members Brann Dailor (drums) and Bill Kelliher (guitar) moved from Rochester, New York to Atlanta. One night, during a High On Fire show, the two met ex-Four Hour Fogger bassist Troy Sanders and guitarist Brett Hinds and started talking underground metal.

Mastodon recorded their first demo in June 2000 and played numerous dates with bands as far ranging as Cannibal Corpse, Queens Of The Stone Age and Morbid Angel. The crushing demo and powerful live shows earned them a record deal with Relapse Records, and in August the band released its debut EP Lifesblood. Technically complex, rhythmically pummeling and instilled with groove, the CD earned Mastodon a loyal following even if it didn't exactly pay the rent.

In October 2001, Mastodon entered the studio with producer Matt Bayles to record their full-length debut, Remission. The album came out in 2002 and its striking blend of stoner metal, hardcore, prog-rock and, southern rock set the metal world ablaze. But it was the raging turmoil and pulverizing elegance of 2004's Leviathan, again recorded with Bayles, that made Mastodon one of the most lauded new groups. Revolver called them one of the 25 Greatest Live Bands Ever and Metal Hammer declared them a group you "Must Hear" and Kerrang labeled them "Best Band On The Planet." It wasn't just metal fans that felt the love. Alternative Press named them one the "25 Most Important Bands in Metal" and they were even profiled in Rolling Stone.

Instead of writing songs for commercial rock radio like many of their peers, Mastodon draw inspiration from within, combining their favorite musical styles, including thrash, doom, prog and psychedelic metal to concoct something utterly original, undeniably devastating and irrefutably entrancing.