The Czar: Usurper / Escape / Martyr / Spiral

Guitarist Bill Kelliher explained to The Skinny magazine that this four part suite, "was even longer when we first wrote it and put it all together. The record only has seven songs, but this really is four [I. Usurper, II. Escape, III. Martyr, IV. Spiral] in one, each one of those parts could be taken out separately and it's a song on its own." He added: "The Czar is like a book and each part is a chapter. It's a monster and it's one of my favorite Mastodon songs to date. The beginning is very pretty and eerie; the story that it tells is of the Czarina – the Czar's wife – trying to warn Rasputin about the assassins that are coming to kill him. It's a really interesting story and when it kicks into the heavy riffage it's monstrous. It's just a big explosion of rock and then it kind of kicks into some funk and there's some tambourine and woodblock playing going on in the middle, then it kind of blasts off into outer space with the guitar solo at the end there. Then it goes back to the beginning. Brendan [O'Brien, producer] sang on the end of it, he and Brann [Dailor, drums] handled those vocal harmonies. It just came out really well; it's a really heavy but pretty song - just under ten minutes long."

Little black lacquer boxes that the band bought while touring Russia was the inspiration for "Usurper," the opening song of the four. The title refers to the mad monk, Rasputin, who was a usurper in the Czar's court.

Another song with a similar subject matter is Boney M's "Rasputin." However it is thought unlikely that the German pop group's ditty was much of an influence for the Atlantan progressive metal quartet.