Sometimes it's the little things that bother me

I just bought Blood Mountain by Mastodon yesterday and proceeded to rip it to my computer.  The first thing that stood out was that among tracks of such short running time, the final track "Pendulous Sky", was 22:15 in length.  While I'm not the type who gets overly excited about super long songs, I was still quite intrigued.

Around five minutes into the song, I'm treated to several minutes of silence only to be followed by a rather brief  "hidden track".  While I don't mind hidden tracks/songs/messages on CD's, why falsely extend the running time of a song like that .  I mainly get annoyed by it if I'm listening to my MP3 player on the go and want to hear the "bonus" content and have to fast forward through the empty space.  I recall Anthrax doing something similar on Volume 8 on "Stealing from a Thief", though the pause wasn't as big.

I say if you put a hidden track on an album, put it as it's own track but don't actually list it on the packaging.  The surprise is just the same when you find out you have an extra bonus at the end of the album, and it's not any more hidden if you pad the track length.

Do things like this bother anyone else or is it just me?

I like hidden tracks when they are properly hidden. What I mean by that is if you ignore track lengths, the hidden track should be a natural progression from the track before. When done right, they are enjoyable. I agree that 10-15 minutes of silence is annoying, so an ambient bridge is often a better way to keep things going and interesting. It only really bothers me when the hidden track is shit.

Yes they don�t go down well with me either. Usually a waste of time and destroying the random track option.