Earlier today, the Newsroom (OK, pretty much just me and producer Daniel "Monty" Montalto) was abuzz with excitement about the happenings over on Mastodon's official Web site. Seems the Atlanta prog/thrash/tech metallers had placed a countdown clock on the page, and it was rapidly, well, counting down, due to hit all zeros at noon ET.
And when we finally got to the zero hour, what would be revealed? Information about the band's long-awaited new album, Crack the Skye, a concept disc based on (depending on what you read) the life of indestructible Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin, the art aesthetics of Tsarist Russia, astral travel or Stephen Hawking's conceptual theories on Wormholes? The secrets of the Birchmen of Blood Mountain? Webcam footage of the slaughter of a snow leopard? Knowing Mastodon, truly any of those things were possible.
By John Ochoa
Walk around the MTV News office on any given day, and you're bound to hear music, because, while we may be journalists, we're all music lovers first and foremost. It's what drew us all to the job, and it's just what we do. Often, I'll stroll past hip-hop editor Shaheem Reid's office, and he'll be cranking the latest mixtapes. Right next door, in rock writer James "Hollywood" Montgomery's office, he's almost always blasting Radiohead or the Hold Steady or whatever indie band everyone's talking about this week.
Working at MTV News certainly has its perks, especially if you're a tremendous music fan. There are the free CDs that arrive in your mailbox months before they hit store shelves, the concerts and, of course, meeting some of today's biggest — and smallest — artists to talk (what else?) music. 