6. Mastodon">https://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/statusainthood/archives/2007/07/live_s... at the Pitchfork Music Festival, 7/15/07.

The Pitchfork Festival, more than any other I've seen, thrives on good vibes: dudes with beards bashing out warm and pleasant indie-pop while people drink cheap beer under trees or play hackysack. But three days of pure good-vibe blissout can be a bit much, and so it was an unalloyed joy to see Mastodon, all scraggly pompadours and facial tattoos and thundering riffage, blasting through everything, like someone had opened the gates to a more savage dimension and let all the bad things through. A few months earlier at Roseland, Mastodon had fallen victim to terrible muffling sound, but in the open air, they sounded like perfect machines of destruction. Indie-rock festivals sometimes face the problem of bands too timid and small-sounding to do anything but flop around helplessly on stages too big for them. But Mastodon was the rare band who seemed too big for the stage they were rocking. And that Clipse immediately followed their set with some of their own blasts of atomized rage was a big bonus.