The members of Mastodon figure that if they're going to sling metal, it might as well be epic, not only in the soaring and crushing musicianship but in subject matter that ascends to the lyrical and fantastic.

Still, they know where to draw the line.

"We're not putting dragons on anything," says drummer and co-lyricist Brann Dailor. "That's crossing the line for us. Dragons. We were shown this T-shirt design that had two dragons and the word 'Mastodon.' And we said we can't have dragons on it. That's crossing the line."

	Ryan Russell The members of Mastodon -- Brann Dailor, left, Brent Hinds, Troy Sanders, Bill Kelliher -- are having one monster time. Click photo for larger image. Mastodon With: Converge, Priestess. Where: Rex Theatre, South Side. When: 7 p.m. Friday. Tickets: $18; 1-800-594-8499.

Mastodon has, however, made allowances for the Cysquatch, a one-eyed race of demons, apparently antlered, that appears on the band's third album, "Blood Mountain." The record showcases the Atlanta band's signature explosion of time-shifting hardcore, metal and progressive rock in a cinematic story about a journey up a mountain that involves monsters, avalanches and the gnawing of flesh.

It follows the 2002 release "Leviathan," that was inspired by Melville's "Moby Dick." This time, Dailor says, he was reading a book called "Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood," about the nature of DNA, and had the idea of making a "blood" album. That, however, wasn't deemed to be epic enough, and so the mountain and everything that comes with it was invoked.

"We like monster movies, we like monsters," he says. "It's fun to write about that stuff using your own life and struggles, but using it metaphorically, and not being so literal. Plus, when you write music, you get a movie playing in your head along with whatever riff is going on. We try to put ourselves mentally in a situation, and riffs are born out of that. Like the opening riff for 'The Wolf is Loose' sounds like someone being chased or hunted. For us, it's just kind of fun to create monsters and things. You're like, 'Let's have this Cysquatch that shoots things out of its eyeballs.' It makes for [bad...] metal T-shirts, as well."

Dig into those monstrous lyrics -- "Three-horned face/Pillar of red/Evil lives atop my crooked spine/Rosebush current flow/Carmine river go/Solar storms erupt on the sun/Ice fields blanket land" -- and you might begin to wonder what hallucinogens were in play during the writing of "Blood Mountain."

"Yeah, you'd think that," Dailor says with a laugh. "I did a lot of acid when I was a teenager. I think I opened my eyes when I used those drugs back then and it allowed me to get to those places. And I don't need them anymore now 'cause I know how to get there."

Between the monsters, the massive metal and the woolly mammoth name, Mastodon is teetering so close to the brink of "Spinal Tap," you can almost see the Druids.

"We don't feel like we're being Spinal Tap," Dailor says, "but through someone else's eyes, we might be. This whole thing that we think is so epic, to someone else, might be completely laughable."

And yet, Mastodon appears to be one of the rare metal bands that is embraced in indie-rock circles and also by critics. "Blood Mountain" not only topped the year-end list of "Metal Hammer" and came in No. 5 at Kerang, it drew praise from Pitchfork and was the ninth best album in Rolling Stone.

Dailor isn't all that impressed.

"That kind of stuff is really cool for my parents to read," he says. "Rolling Stone, that's something that people in my family can understand. If it's like, 'Hey, we got Album of the Year in Terrorizer,' they're like, 'What the hell's that?' With Rolling Stone, it's like, 'Oh my god, hey, you didn't waste your life playing music.'

"Not that they ever thought that. My family has been super-supportive of me and everything I wanted to do. I don't think they were stoked that I was working at a mini-mart and got shot at. They were thinking, 'Well, hopefully things will turn around for him and music will work out.' But it usually doesn't and you can't expect it to, especially playing the kind of music that we play."

Sonically, Dailor says the band draws inspiration from sludge metal masters Neurosis and as well as the usual Metallica, Slayer and Iron Maiden that he grew up on. He thinks geography also adds an interesting twist to the band chemistry.

"The fact that [guitarist Brett Hinds] comes from Birmingham, Ala., and listened to a lot of country and learned how to do that chicken-pickin' stuff has a huge impact on our sound. [Bassist Bill Kelliher] and I are from the North and we're more into speed metal and punk rock. Mastodon is where the North and South meet. We're the Mason-Dixon line of metal."

From the Mason-Dixon, Mastodon currently is climbing the metal mountain with robust sales, tours with the likes of Iron Maiden and a trip this weekend to the Grammy Awards. If it keeps going like this, in a few years they could find themselves standing on an arena stage with a towering Cysquatch, preferably blowing smoke out of its ears.

"Yeah, I want to have a stage show. That would be awesome to blow fire and see [kickin'] visuals going on behind us. That would be great, but we're not there yet. We have just enough money to come out here and play. We have a bus" -- where Dailor is obsessively working his way through the seasons of "Six Feet Under" -- "so things are a little more comfortable than they used to be. Hopefully the venues we play will keep growing."

For now, what Mastodon fans will see on stage, Dailor says, is "four smelly white dudes that look like they haven't showered in months."