I don’t really want to turn this feature into a rant, but I think this needs to be said…so bear with me for a second.

The House of Blues franchise sucks for a lot of reasons: they hike up their ticket prices to unnecessary levels, they cookie-cut their buildings from one town to another, and, in general, are partially responsible for slowly sucking the soul out of modern rock music as a whole. They facilitate the dead careers of ancient artists (like, say, Bret Michaels) and exhibit such a money-fueled, taste-bankrupt methodology of booking, we end up with Kottonmouth Kings playing shows in San Diego seemingly once a month.

But when the venue does book some good music, it’s still viscerally a decent rock club: the mixing is on-point, and the floorspace is relatively kept. But there is still one thing, above all of my other gripes, that makes the House of Blues an ultra-shitty place to see music — and that, of course, is the everlasting bane of the 21+ tag.

Being 19, almost every time I go to a show marked “all ages,” my peers and I are always, always, forced into the tiny, sparsely-seated upper balcony. We end up having to look down at the shows we paid money to see, which isn’t exactly ideal, especially considering the balcony is intended for people less-interested in the ambience and brutality of a prog-metal show. Shouldn’t the kids be on the floor? Shouldn’t we be the ones in the pit? I’m not by any means a mosh warrior, but watching a few adults half-heartedly shove each other while dozens of spiked-out, leathered-out teenagers look on from grandma-stands is incredibly depressing. It’s the sort of thing that’s killing live music these days; there’s a reason Craig Finn, Bruce Springsteen, and Julian Casablancas sing about “the kids,” because that’s for whom their music is intended: adults are welcome, but primarily, pop music is for young people, and more venues should be slanted that way.

But I digress. I was still at a show, watching one of my favorite metal bands play a set. And that was still pretty good. Anyone who has managed to catch Mastodon recently on their seemingly endless tour across America knows what to expect by now, and that, of course, is Crack The Skye all the way through, in its entirety, no breaks, not even for water — and at this point they’ve got it down to a near robotic level.

“Divinations” slams hard, “The Czar” burns for all 10 minutes, the band stands imposingly rigid, cranking out massive slabs of radio-metal, all without the slightest sense of irony. There is absolutely no sense of spontaneity; the set list is ingrained into their frontal lobes at this point, and naturally, that makes for a pretty entertaining show.

…Unless you’re me. After seeing Mastodon two previous times, I found the “sameness” of the performance rather sterile. There’s no banter or song-tweaks to make it sound any less homogeneous. The band seems comfortable — and maybe a little indifferent — to their performance at this point, but I’m sure that’s only perceptible to veterans of the show like me. I didn’t exactly expect the band to change up their routine too drastically, but I did expect a couple mutations, I mean, just for the band’s sake — playing the same songs every night (especially on such a giant tour) has to get tiring quick.

Regardless, the people witnessing the bombast for the first time were immediately enthralled, and that can rub off on even the most jaded viewers. It’s reductive, but Mastodon were Mastodon, and we probably won’t see anything different from that until the next record comes out. For better or for worse.