Mastodon interview, Kerrang! October 1, 2011
A PHONE conversation with Mastodon’s wildman guitarist Brent Hinds is like little else.
“Who am I talking with?” he drawls. “What? Sean? John? Tom! Well, hello Tom, how are you Tom, is everything good Tom?”
All of this happens in the blink of an eye, before he’s off and talking about something else.
“Plastic leather won’t stop the weather,” he says, apropos of nothing, then adds: “Two titties in a bucket? May as well fuck it.”
By the time you’ve caught up, you realise that not only is he rarely talking about what you’ve asked him, much of the time he’s talking to someone else too. In this case it’s his girlfriend, evidently somewhere in the background, padding around his Atlanta house.
We’re talking because Mastodon have just released their quite brilliant fifth album The Hunter. On it, they have shed some of the more complex, technical guitars that have marked previous records, replacing them with a simpler, more relaxed aesthetic. The concepts they’ve embraced in the past have gone too, allowing for more personal themes to emerge – one of which is the death of Hinds’s brother, Brad, who is the hunter to which the title refers.
In short, they’ve made the record of the year and, before we talk about Hinds’s loss, it seems important to ask him what, musically, he was attempting. It’s a little hard to get him to concentrate, though.
“You’re going to have to repeat that question,” he yells, then laughs a great burbling, crackling laugh so deep and dirty it might have been dredged from the earth’s core. “My girlfriend was grabbing my butt.”
Hinds, now 37, is a bewildering but, nonetheless, entertaining listen: his attention span lasts an instant as he offers a cacophonous stream of consciousness. Much of it sounds like the ramblings of a mad genius, backwoods crazy or swashbuckling pirate. It’s an image made clearer if you picture him: a great bear-like man, with tattooed forehead, wild mop of hair, tangled beard and trunk-like arms. Whose butt is being tickled by his girlfriend.
But hang on: he’s away again.
“Where did you get those shorts at? Are those the ones you found in the lake? Are you kidding me?” he burbles, presumably still to his girlfriend.
Fortunately – and quite suddenly – he remembers there’s someone on the phone which you hope, but couldn’t guarantee, is attached to his ear.
“Tom, let me explain…” And then he’s off on a confusing, but riotous, amble down one of the lanes of his memory: something about his girlfriend burying the shorts in the mud when she was a girl, then digging them up again recently. It’s quite mad.
“She’s got ‘em on right now, I’m not even kidding you Tom. They’ve been in the lake for 15 years buried under mud. She lost them when she was a kid. They look good. What can I say – short shorts on your girlfriend! Phew! Not on your girlfriend. I don’t know your girlfriend. Sorry, we’re getting really off the point here.”
Just as you begin to question your own sanity – in the sure knowledge that at least one person involved in this conversation must be mad, but possibly two – Brent lets rip the most almighty howl, a scream to rip open skies, to send transatlantic phone lines twitching and leaping with its vibrations.
“Holy shit! The cat threw up! THE CAT THREW UP! There’s something weird on the floor over here, I’m not even kidding you. Oh my god, that’s fucked up. I’ve never seen anything like that. Does the cat usually throw up like this?”
He remembers I’m on the phone.
“I’m sorry bro, we’re dealing with a natural disaster here. But damn, that’s a lot of throw-up. What’s wrong with her? Why doesn’t she throw up like normal cats? Our cat’s being poisoned! OUR CAT’S BEING POISONED! Dammit, she’s got epilepsy. That’s not good for a cat.”
THE REST of Mastodon are simpler to interview, but they present their own challenges. Guitarist Bill Kelliher, 40, appears to be ordering food when our phone call is put through; his comments come punctuated with asides like, “more jalapenos please.” Somehow it suggests his mind is elsewhere.
At least bassist Troy Sanders and drummer Brann Dailor are in the UK for press duties. Theoretically, it should be easier to hold their attention since they’re in the same room as Kerrang!
The 36-year-old Dailor shoulders much of the burden, answering questions smartly and with calm authority. If you had to put money on who is the brains and whip-cracker of the Mastodon operation, stick it on the drummer.
Sanders, 38, is a dreamer. He’s frequently quiet – so much so that Dailor prompts him to speak once or twice – and when he talks, his deep baritone is considered, pronounced and slow. When he picks up a magazine and allows his attention to drift to the latest issue of Bizarre, though, it’s clear he doesn’t have that much interest in being interviewed.
“Are you reading a magazine?” asks Brann.
“Erm, no, no,” replies Troy, “I’m just, erm... I’m… erm…”
Then he carries on reading.
FORTUNATELY, MASTODON are not a band who need to talk to sell their albums. Just one listen to The Hunter should be enough to convince most people to burn their record collection and listen to nothing else but these imperious riffs.
Simpler, more concise and free from the convoluted astral, mad-monk concepts that littered last album Crack The Skye, it is a raw and dirty rock record, made pure by a series of stunning vocal melodies. The convoluted, dazzlingly impressive but occasionally impenetrable guitars and structures of the past have largely been streamlined too.
It was written in a rush. It wasn’t until March this year that Mastodon really started. By the end of April, they’d flown to Los Angeles to record drums (completed, unbelievably, in five days) and, before their European Tour started in June, they’d also laid down most of the guitar parts and vocals.
“Normally we spend months and months rehearsing and writing,” says Kelliher. “None of that happened this time.”
They recorded with the producer Mike Elizondo more usually noted for his efforts with rappers Eminem and 50 Cent. It seemed a strange choice but it worked.
“We didn’t really know what he wanted with us,” says Dailor. “We knew he wasn’t going to make us sound like 50 Cent, though – we’re terrible rappers.”
“One thing we did not want was someone known only for their heavy metal production,” says Sanders. “We have different styles in our songs and we wanted someone who could embrace that.”
Out of the studio, it was mostly Dailor who was at the helm. While the other three would drift in and out of their rehearsal space in an Atlanta industrial unit, the drummer says he was there constantly.
“I go down there because I don’t have a life – that is my life,” he says. “Everyone else has stuff to do. I guess I’m just bored.”
It’s more than that though, he drives the band forward. It was his idea, for example, to force them to record so quickly before their summer tour began.
“I couldn’t see us being excited to go into the studio after we got done with a six-week tour,” he says. “If we hadn’t gone into the studio when we did, we wouldn’t have started making this album until about now. Chances are, we wouldn’t be as excited about the stuff we came up with because our music is like milk – it goes off after a while.”
A multi-instrumentalist – he plays guitar and keyboards too – he would work on ideas with whoever happened to be around. Hence the Flaming Lips-ish The Creature Lives was written by Dailor and Sanders, or there’s the more petulant All The Heavy Lifting, written by Dailor alone, on which he says he is “bitching to the rest of the band that it would be nice if they did some work.”
WHEN THEY did write together, they found it liberating not to be chained to a concept. “It was very refreshing to put the idea of doing a concept album to one side,” says Sanders. “It opened the floodgates for many ideas. It would have been quite predictable to do another concept album. Instead, we changed everything.”
It meant the songs came out shorter and sharper – the longest track on The Hunter is five-and-a-half minutes, while their last two albums have featured 13-minute and 22-minute efforts.
“It wasn’t intentional,” says Sanders. “It was never talked about, it all came authentically. It was very instinctual.”
Kelliher, though, admits there was some effort to move on from Crack The Skye. “Everyone was in a trance when they watched us [play it live],” he says. “They would sway back and forth. But then, when we played the old songs, people went fucking crazy. Subconsciously, we were like, ‘Man, we need to mix it up a little more and write some more spontaneous songs’.”
In doing so, they noticed something else happening. Without a concept to hide behind, they were writing more (though not entirely) about personal feelings. Despite the title to Crack The Skye referencing Dailor’s sister, Skye, who committed suicide while a teenager, writing in such a way was not something they had ever much attempted.
Dailor admits that, during the album’s gestation, there was “a bunch of stuff going on. Life stuff that people were dealing with. The album deals with some of that.” But that’s as much as he’s saying, because try and prise the details out of him, and he clams up.
“It’s not stuff I can get into, unfortunately,” he says. “It was personal stuff that made it difficult for four people to get into a room together.”
Even with more cajoling, that’s as far he’ll go.
“We don’t need to talk about it if we don’t want to,” he adds, politely but firmly. “There’s no amount of prodding and prying anyone can do to get that information out of me. I’m not going to talk about it. We dealt with it on the songs and that’s as much as people are going to get. It’s nobody’s business but ours.”
AT LEAST some of what they were coping with is clear. When Hinds’s brother died in December, it knocked the guitarist sideways. When he’s asked about it, he focuses for the first time.
“How hard was it?” Hinds asks. “It was as hard as it would have been for you if your older brother had just died of a heart attack at 39. As hard as it would have been for anybody who had lost their only brother. It’s that hard. It was such a huge shock.
“I kept thinking about him and wanted to memorialise him, which is why we called the album The Hunter, and it’s in loving memory of him and Susie Polay, our accountant’s wife who passed away with stomach cancer [and about who The Sparrow is written]. Those things are heavy shit; they hit us like a family.”
The guitarist sought solace in music, turning his grief into ideas.
“It’s an escape and it’s a great way to deal with it,” he says. “Thank God for music, you know? Shit, it ain’t fun. But you memorialise your loved ones and they live on through the music, and that’s a majestic way of doing things. This [album] is extremely heartfelt; these songs are laden with meanings.”
Hinds has had well documented problems with drink and alcohol in the past. When that adherence to inebriation led to a brain haemorrhage after a fight following the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, he at least admitted he might do a little less crack. It’s a wildman reputation earned after stories of rampant drug consumption, umpteen brushes with authorities, several brawls and the (some would say well-deserved) punching of Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes.
There were some who were worried his tendency towards Neanderthal reactions might lead to problems in the wake of his brother’s death.
“Surprisingly, Brent was really good,” says Dailor. “He handled it really well – I was proud of him. But it was very sad. A lot of people think they’ve got him figured out but I don’t think they do. People think he’s a fucking mental case but there’s a beautiful person in there. There’s a lot to him, he’s a complex character and we love him.”
“Brann said he was proud of me? No way! Brann really said that?” says Hinds when he’s told of Dailor’s comments. Then he yells at his girlfriend: “Hey, Brann told Kerrang! magazine that he was proud of me. Ha ha! That’s hilarious. Proud of me? I’m in awe.”
Why is he so surprised?
“You don’t know me and Brann’s relationship,” he replies. “We’re like brothers, if you get what I mean.”
Ask him if he’s calmer after the haemorrhage and death of his brother, and his answer is… well, his answer is what you might expect.
“No way, I’m shooting up heroin with a homo friend while robbing my next door neighbour at the moment. What kind of question is that? Of course I’ve calmed down. I just sit and smoke dope, spin vinyl and play guitar. I’ve never been crazy, people just don’t know how to have fun is all it is.”
Is he misunderstood, then?
“People have lots of different opinions of me, I’m either an asshole or the coolest guy in the world. People are fucking crazy. But I’m not the wildman in Mastodon. The wildman is Troy Sanders. Don’t let him fool you with that kind, purring, gentle face of his. That motherfucker, he’s as wild as a bobcat in the wilderness. And Brann Dailor is as crazy as a shithouse racoon. And Bill Kelliher? That dude’s a damn Mexican. I swear to God.”
And while it’s an impassioned argument, it might have more of a ring of truth had he not stopped and sung a song (edited here for sense) about god knows what midway through.
ONE THING he’s right about, though, is Kelliher. Because the band’s other guitarist was just as much of a partier. But it brought severe consequences.
Last summer Mastodon had to cancel a tour for the first time in their history as Kelliher was hospitalised (for the second time) with drinking-related pancreatitis. Today he’s sober, but admits the touring cycle for Crack The Skye took a toll.
“When you’re on tour, life gets fake,” he says in his slow, Southern drawl. “You get put on a pedestal, you travel the world in a tourbus and everyone wants to party with you. Everyone wants to give you pills and drugs. I just turned 40 this year and my body’s telling me I can’t do that anymore.”
Mastodon took it as a sign that they had pushed things too far. Each of them, too, was equally exhausted. So much so, the band were contemplating splitting had they not taken cancelled last summer’s tour to take a break.
“It wasn’t a hard decision, it was a necessity,” says Dailor. “We would have broken up if we hadn’t. Or Bill would have died. We were burned out. We hadn’t been home in a long time.”
The time off allowed them all to relax, and for Kelliher to stop drinking. “I’m in a good place right now,” he says. “I’ve stopped partying. I know how fragile my health is.”
MASTODON WILL need to be in fighting shape. Because the release of The Hunter could herald exciting times. More mainstream, more accessible and more immediate than anything they’re previously written, this could be the record to convert their critical respect into wider sales.
“That big, stratospheric record? We’d welcome that, but too many people have told me too many times ‘this is the record that’s going to do it’,” replies Dailor. “Do what? What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not getting swept up in that because it ends in disappointment.”
Hinds thinks the same – “We’ll see what happens,” he says, after joking that “if this isn’t the fucking ‘one’ then I’m quitting” – but admits he would like the money mainstream success would bring.
“I live in the fucking ghetto in Atlanta, Georgia,” he barks. “I could score crack right outside my house if I wanted to. My home sucks. If I had money, I’d move. Life ain’t peaches, cream, candy and fucking rainbows. So hopefully, I’ll make a little money.”
Do they get jealous, then, when they see bands with half their musical talent gain more success?
“No, if I thought like that, I’d drive myself insane,” says Dailor. “Regardless of what music you play and what level you’re at, being in a band is hard. The bottom line is that you’ve got to be away from home – and that’s the hardest thing. So I don’t look at other bands and think, ‘Our music is more intelligent; you don’t deserve what you have,’ because they’re out there just like we are. They’re missing someone at home too.”
He’s also wary that greater success will lead to more tours and increase the chance of another burn-out.
“If The Hunter was more popular than Crack The Skye, it would be a double edged sword,” he reasons. “It would mean more money and more comfort. But it means being away more. It means Troy can’t be there for his kids, and I can’t be there for my lady.”
Still, greater success is what Mastodon deserve. Because The Hunter is a record that blows everything else the band have done – and everything else yet released this year – out of the water.
Whether they grasp that success is their choice and it’s a credit to them that they’re not chasing it. At the very least, though, you’d hope it allows Hinds to move out of the crack ghetto.
A thought that will no doubt have Atlanta’s more respectable neighbourhoods shaking with fear.
© Tom Bryant 2012
“Who am I talking with?” he drawls. “What? Sean? John? Tom! Well, hello Tom, how are you Tom, is everything good Tom?”
All of this happens in the blink of an eye, before he’s off and talking about something else.
“Plastic leather won’t stop the weather,” he says, apropos of nothing, then adds: “Two titties in a bucket? May as well fuck it.”
By the time you’ve caught up, you realise that not only is he rarely talking about what you’ve asked him, much of the time he’s talking to someone else too. In this case it’s his girlfriend, evidently somewhere in the background, padding around his Atlanta house.
We’re talking because Mastodon have just released their quite brilliant fifth album The Hunter. On it, they have shed some of the more complex, technical guitars that have marked previous records, replacing them with a simpler, more relaxed aesthetic. The concepts they’ve embraced in the past have gone too, allowing for more personal themes to emerge – one of which is the death of Hinds’s brother, Brad, who is the hunter to which the title refers.
In short, they’ve made the record of the year and, before we talk about Hinds’s loss, it seems important to ask him what, musically, he was attempting. It’s a little hard to get him to concentrate, though.
“You’re going to have to repeat that question,” he yells, then laughs a great burbling, crackling laugh so deep and dirty it might have been dredged from the earth’s core. “My girlfriend was grabbing my butt.”
Hinds, now 37, is a bewildering but, nonetheless, entertaining listen: his attention span lasts an instant as he offers a cacophonous stream of consciousness. Much of it sounds like the ramblings of a mad genius, backwoods crazy or swashbuckling pirate. It’s an image made clearer if you picture him: a great bear-like man, with tattooed forehead, wild mop of hair, tangled beard and trunk-like arms. Whose butt is being tickled by his girlfriend.
But hang on: he’s away again.
“Where did you get those shorts at? Are those the ones you found in the lake? Are you kidding me?” he burbles, presumably still to his girlfriend.
Fortunately – and quite suddenly – he remembers there’s someone on the phone which you hope, but couldn’t guarantee, is attached to his ear.
“Tom, let me explain…” And then he’s off on a confusing, but riotous, amble down one of the lanes of his memory: something about his girlfriend burying the shorts in the mud when she was a girl, then digging them up again recently. It’s quite mad.
“She’s got ‘em on right now, I’m not even kidding you Tom. They’ve been in the lake for 15 years buried under mud. She lost them when she was a kid. They look good. What can I say – short shorts on your girlfriend! Phew! Not on your girlfriend. I don’t know your girlfriend. Sorry, we’re getting really off the point here.”
Just as you begin to question your own sanity – in the sure knowledge that at least one person involved in this conversation must be mad, but possibly two – Brent lets rip the most almighty howl, a scream to rip open skies, to send transatlantic phone lines twitching and leaping with its vibrations.
“Holy shit! The cat threw up! THE CAT THREW UP! There’s something weird on the floor over here, I’m not even kidding you. Oh my god, that’s fucked up. I’ve never seen anything like that. Does the cat usually throw up like this?”
He remembers I’m on the phone.
“I’m sorry bro, we’re dealing with a natural disaster here. But damn, that’s a lot of throw-up. What’s wrong with her? Why doesn’t she throw up like normal cats? Our cat’s being poisoned! OUR CAT’S BEING POISONED! Dammit, she’s got epilepsy. That’s not good for a cat.”
THE REST of Mastodon are simpler to interview, but they present their own challenges. Guitarist Bill Kelliher, 40, appears to be ordering food when our phone call is put through; his comments come punctuated with asides like, “more jalapenos please.” Somehow it suggests his mind is elsewhere.
At least bassist Troy Sanders and drummer Brann Dailor are in the UK for press duties. Theoretically, it should be easier to hold their attention since they’re in the same room as Kerrang!
The 36-year-old Dailor shoulders much of the burden, answering questions smartly and with calm authority. If you had to put money on who is the brains and whip-cracker of the Mastodon operation, stick it on the drummer.
Sanders, 38, is a dreamer. He’s frequently quiet – so much so that Dailor prompts him to speak once or twice – and when he talks, his deep baritone is considered, pronounced and slow. When he picks up a magazine and allows his attention to drift to the latest issue of Bizarre, though, it’s clear he doesn’t have that much interest in being interviewed.
“Are you reading a magazine?” asks Brann.
“Erm, no, no,” replies Troy, “I’m just, erm... I’m… erm…”
Then he carries on reading.
FORTUNATELY, MASTODON are not a band who need to talk to sell their albums. Just one listen to The Hunter should be enough to convince most people to burn their record collection and listen to nothing else but these imperious riffs.
Simpler, more concise and free from the convoluted astral, mad-monk concepts that littered last album Crack The Skye, it is a raw and dirty rock record, made pure by a series of stunning vocal melodies. The convoluted, dazzlingly impressive but occasionally impenetrable guitars and structures of the past have largely been streamlined too.
It was written in a rush. It wasn’t until March this year that Mastodon really started. By the end of April, they’d flown to Los Angeles to record drums (completed, unbelievably, in five days) and, before their European Tour started in June, they’d also laid down most of the guitar parts and vocals.
“Normally we spend months and months rehearsing and writing,” says Kelliher. “None of that happened this time.”
They recorded with the producer Mike Elizondo more usually noted for his efforts with rappers Eminem and 50 Cent. It seemed a strange choice but it worked.
“We didn’t really know what he wanted with us,” says Dailor. “We knew he wasn’t going to make us sound like 50 Cent, though – we’re terrible rappers.”
“One thing we did not want was someone known only for their heavy metal production,” says Sanders. “We have different styles in our songs and we wanted someone who could embrace that.”
Out of the studio, it was mostly Dailor who was at the helm. While the other three would drift in and out of their rehearsal space in an Atlanta industrial unit, the drummer says he was there constantly.
“I go down there because I don’t have a life – that is my life,” he says. “Everyone else has stuff to do. I guess I’m just bored.”
It’s more than that though, he drives the band forward. It was his idea, for example, to force them to record so quickly before their summer tour began.
“I couldn’t see us being excited to go into the studio after we got done with a six-week tour,” he says. “If we hadn’t gone into the studio when we did, we wouldn’t have started making this album until about now. Chances are, we wouldn’t be as excited about the stuff we came up with because our music is like milk – it goes off after a while.”
A multi-instrumentalist – he plays guitar and keyboards too – he would work on ideas with whoever happened to be around. Hence the Flaming Lips-ish The Creature Lives was written by Dailor and Sanders, or there’s the more petulant All The Heavy Lifting, written by Dailor alone, on which he says he is “bitching to the rest of the band that it would be nice if they did some work.”
WHEN THEY did write together, they found it liberating not to be chained to a concept. “It was very refreshing to put the idea of doing a concept album to one side,” says Sanders. “It opened the floodgates for many ideas. It would have been quite predictable to do another concept album. Instead, we changed everything.”
It meant the songs came out shorter and sharper – the longest track on The Hunter is five-and-a-half minutes, while their last two albums have featured 13-minute and 22-minute efforts.
“It wasn’t intentional,” says Sanders. “It was never talked about, it all came authentically. It was very instinctual.”
Kelliher, though, admits there was some effort to move on from Crack The Skye. “Everyone was in a trance when they watched us [play it live],” he says. “They would sway back and forth. But then, when we played the old songs, people went fucking crazy. Subconsciously, we were like, ‘Man, we need to mix it up a little more and write some more spontaneous songs’.”
In doing so, they noticed something else happening. Without a concept to hide behind, they were writing more (though not entirely) about personal feelings. Despite the title to Crack The Skye referencing Dailor’s sister, Skye, who committed suicide while a teenager, writing in such a way was not something they had ever much attempted.
Dailor admits that, during the album’s gestation, there was “a bunch of stuff going on. Life stuff that people were dealing with. The album deals with some of that.” But that’s as much as he’s saying, because try and prise the details out of him, and he clams up.
“It’s not stuff I can get into, unfortunately,” he says. “It was personal stuff that made it difficult for four people to get into a room together.”
Even with more cajoling, that’s as far he’ll go.
“We don’t need to talk about it if we don’t want to,” he adds, politely but firmly. “There’s no amount of prodding and prying anyone can do to get that information out of me. I’m not going to talk about it. We dealt with it on the songs and that’s as much as people are going to get. It’s nobody’s business but ours.”
AT LEAST some of what they were coping with is clear. When Hinds’s brother died in December, it knocked the guitarist sideways. When he’s asked about it, he focuses for the first time.
“How hard was it?” Hinds asks. “It was as hard as it would have been for you if your older brother had just died of a heart attack at 39. As hard as it would have been for anybody who had lost their only brother. It’s that hard. It was such a huge shock.
“I kept thinking about him and wanted to memorialise him, which is why we called the album The Hunter, and it’s in loving memory of him and Susie Polay, our accountant’s wife who passed away with stomach cancer [and about who The Sparrow is written]. Those things are heavy shit; they hit us like a family.”
The guitarist sought solace in music, turning his grief into ideas.
“It’s an escape and it’s a great way to deal with it,” he says. “Thank God for music, you know? Shit, it ain’t fun. But you memorialise your loved ones and they live on through the music, and that’s a majestic way of doing things. This [album] is extremely heartfelt; these songs are laden with meanings.”
Hinds has had well documented problems with drink and alcohol in the past. When that adherence to inebriation led to a brain haemorrhage after a fight following the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, he at least admitted he might do a little less crack. It’s a wildman reputation earned after stories of rampant drug consumption, umpteen brushes with authorities, several brawls and the (some would say well-deserved) punching of Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes.
There were some who were worried his tendency towards Neanderthal reactions might lead to problems in the wake of his brother’s death.
“Surprisingly, Brent was really good,” says Dailor. “He handled it really well – I was proud of him. But it was very sad. A lot of people think they’ve got him figured out but I don’t think they do. People think he’s a fucking mental case but there’s a beautiful person in there. There’s a lot to him, he’s a complex character and we love him.”
“Brann said he was proud of me? No way! Brann really said that?” says Hinds when he’s told of Dailor’s comments. Then he yells at his girlfriend: “Hey, Brann told Kerrang! magazine that he was proud of me. Ha ha! That’s hilarious. Proud of me? I’m in awe.”
Why is he so surprised?
“You don’t know me and Brann’s relationship,” he replies. “We’re like brothers, if you get what I mean.”
Ask him if he’s calmer after the haemorrhage and death of his brother, and his answer is… well, his answer is what you might expect.
“No way, I’m shooting up heroin with a homo friend while robbing my next door neighbour at the moment. What kind of question is that? Of course I’ve calmed down. I just sit and smoke dope, spin vinyl and play guitar. I’ve never been crazy, people just don’t know how to have fun is all it is.”
Is he misunderstood, then?
“People have lots of different opinions of me, I’m either an asshole or the coolest guy in the world. People are fucking crazy. But I’m not the wildman in Mastodon. The wildman is Troy Sanders. Don’t let him fool you with that kind, purring, gentle face of his. That motherfucker, he’s as wild as a bobcat in the wilderness. And Brann Dailor is as crazy as a shithouse racoon. And Bill Kelliher? That dude’s a damn Mexican. I swear to God.”
And while it’s an impassioned argument, it might have more of a ring of truth had he not stopped and sung a song (edited here for sense) about god knows what midway through.
ONE THING he’s right about, though, is Kelliher. Because the band’s other guitarist was just as much of a partier. But it brought severe consequences.
Last summer Mastodon had to cancel a tour for the first time in their history as Kelliher was hospitalised (for the second time) with drinking-related pancreatitis. Today he’s sober, but admits the touring cycle for Crack The Skye took a toll.
“When you’re on tour, life gets fake,” he says in his slow, Southern drawl. “You get put on a pedestal, you travel the world in a tourbus and everyone wants to party with you. Everyone wants to give you pills and drugs. I just turned 40 this year and my body’s telling me I can’t do that anymore.”
Mastodon took it as a sign that they had pushed things too far. Each of them, too, was equally exhausted. So much so, the band were contemplating splitting had they not taken cancelled last summer’s tour to take a break.
“It wasn’t a hard decision, it was a necessity,” says Dailor. “We would have broken up if we hadn’t. Or Bill would have died. We were burned out. We hadn’t been home in a long time.”
The time off allowed them all to relax, and for Kelliher to stop drinking. “I’m in a good place right now,” he says. “I’ve stopped partying. I know how fragile my health is.”
MASTODON WILL need to be in fighting shape. Because the release of The Hunter could herald exciting times. More mainstream, more accessible and more immediate than anything they’re previously written, this could be the record to convert their critical respect into wider sales.
“That big, stratospheric record? We’d welcome that, but too many people have told me too many times ‘this is the record that’s going to do it’,” replies Dailor. “Do what? What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not getting swept up in that because it ends in disappointment.”
Hinds thinks the same – “We’ll see what happens,” he says, after joking that “if this isn’t the fucking ‘one’ then I’m quitting” – but admits he would like the money mainstream success would bring.
“I live in the fucking ghetto in Atlanta, Georgia,” he barks. “I could score crack right outside my house if I wanted to. My home sucks. If I had money, I’d move. Life ain’t peaches, cream, candy and fucking rainbows. So hopefully, I’ll make a little money.”
Do they get jealous, then, when they see bands with half their musical talent gain more success?
“No, if I thought like that, I’d drive myself insane,” says Dailor. “Regardless of what music you play and what level you’re at, being in a band is hard. The bottom line is that you’ve got to be away from home – and that’s the hardest thing. So I don’t look at other bands and think, ‘Our music is more intelligent; you don’t deserve what you have,’ because they’re out there just like we are. They’re missing someone at home too.”
He’s also wary that greater success will lead to more tours and increase the chance of another burn-out.
“If The Hunter was more popular than Crack The Skye, it would be a double edged sword,” he reasons. “It would mean more money and more comfort. But it means being away more. It means Troy can’t be there for his kids, and I can’t be there for my lady.”
Still, greater success is what Mastodon deserve. Because The Hunter is a record that blows everything else the band have done – and everything else yet released this year – out of the water.
Whether they grasp that success is their choice and it’s a credit to them that they’re not chasing it. At the very least, though, you’d hope it allows Hinds to move out of the crack ghetto.
A thought that will no doubt have Atlanta’s more respectable neighbourhoods shaking with fear.
© Tom Bryant 2012
