Somewhere In America: Mastodon - "The Motherload" (Reprise Records)

"Somewhere in America, Miley Cyrus is still TWERKIN,'" that now-infamous Jay Z line single-handedly sums up the cultural assimilation of yet another once "cool" African-American trend, TWERKING. It's just something that "white bread" middle American women, not entirely unlike Taylor Swift, really shouldn't even be attempting to do in the first place. Atlanta-based Prog-Metal behemoths, Mastodon's latest video treatment, "The Motherload" could likely coexist somewhere in the unlikely cross-hairs nestled in-between Sir-Mix-a-Lot and Danzig. "We weren't trying to make fun of Hip-Hop videos. It was a fine line, because I didn't want to come off as being sexist, so I thought that maybe the females took center stage and looked powerful and had this dance battle," Mastodon drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor recently explained to Pitchfork. Dailor additionally notes that he and his Mastodon bandmates along with directors Jonathan Rej & Thomas Bingham drew inspiration from 90's-era MTV Heavy Metal videos from Marilyn Manson, Metallica, and Nirvana. "The Motherload" is essentially a Hip-Hop-inspired TWERK-fest with Satanic undertones that could likely be the end-all-be-all of an outpouring of 2013-14 TWERK-based videos ass-tastically ushered in by Miley Cyrus & Robin Thicke's now-infamous "cheeky" VMA's performance. The Brann Dailor-fronted track's accompanying video treatment is littered with black-and-white scenes of what appears to be Adam & Eve, side show freaks, lizard people, numerous "dance battles," and one particular zebra print-wearing TWERKER who's suddenly morphed into kaleidoscopic images, all inner-spliced amongst some seriously badass Mastodon performance footage. "The Motherload" is the third single extracted from the band's sixth studio album, Once More 'Round The Sun, which for whatever reasons, doesn't include their recent brooding Adult Swim singles creation, "Atlanta," recorded with one of the forefathers of 90's Alternative Rock, Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes.