In the Studio: Head Injury Inspires New Melodic Mastodon Album

By DAVID PEISNER
OCTOBER 7, 2008 11:37 AM ET
Mastodon can trace the origins of their fourth album to the pavement in front of the Mandalay Bay casino in Las Vegas. That's where the Atlanta metal band's guitarist-vocalist, Brent Hinds, was attacked and cracked his head open during a drunken altercation following the MTV VMAs in September 2007. Hinds suffered brain hemorrhaging, and then, as he recovered, he was plagued by vertigo.

"I was dizzy for eight months," he says, hanging out at a studio in the band's hometown, along with guitarist Bill Kelliher, bassist-vocalist Troy Sanders and drummer Brann Dailor. "During those months, I just sat with my acoustic and a little marijuana, and wrote all the music. I wanted a more melodic, easy-listening situation, and that definitely came from having head trauma."

Mastodon's last set, 2006's Blood Mountain, was their major-label debut, and it brought them up from the metal underground to a wider audience, earning them a Grammy nomination and MTV spins for "Colony of Birchmen." The new album continues the trend. "We wanted to make something a little broader," says Dailor. "A classic-rock-sounding record."

Those impulses led Mastodon to producer Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam). They were initially introduced to O'Brien backstage at a Springsteen show by E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg, whose son is a Mastodon fan. "I asked Bruce, 'How was Brendan to work with?' " says Dailor. "He said, 'He's the only person I've ever trusted with my music.' I was like, 'Well, you're the Boss.'"

O'Brien brought a relaxed vibe to the studio and helped flesh out the album's classic-rock heart. "Quintessence" adds spacey washes of synthesizers and vocal harmonies to the brawny riffs and piercing guitar lines. The thrashing "Divinations" comes on like Master of Puppets-era Metallica, only with soaring vocals and a bright chorus, and "Oblivion" inserts a bluesy guitar solo into a sinister, multitempo, prog-metal epic.

The finished album will contain only seven songs, and, like previous Mastodon outings, will be a concept record. After past efforts focused on fire, water and earth, the new disc will explore air, ghosts and the ethereal world. The group has talked about eventually combining the releases into a box set called The Elements.

"Musically and lyrically, this is the record we'd be writing if we weren't going to exist tomorrow," says Sanders. "We don't feel like we have to do a certain type of record to please a certain group. We're free to change."

I haven't heard the new album yet, but I seriously doubt Mastodon is making a calculated move to the mainstream to try to get rich. I think bands just get bored and try different things. It's probably an ego trip on some level, but I doubt it is completely about money. I suspect Mastodon were doing pretty well with their traditional fanbase, and they could've had a long, successful career touring and churning out different versions of Leviathan for decades.

“A few people had recommended him, and said he’d been asking about working with us,” Dailor says. “He’d been asking to work with us since before Blood Mountain came out. We learned he was this old thrash metal kid from L.A., and he totally got the band and understood what we were trying to do.”

While some longtime fans might wince at Elizondo’s pop leaning résumé, Dailor stresses that this isn’t really a new direction for the band. Though it’s not the long-awaited “Air” record (Mastodon’s first three albums featured fire, water, and earth elemental themes), Dailor confirms it’s still the same band.

“Everything still sounds like Mastodon,” he says. “There’s no way around that. We wanted to flip it upside down and get away from all the emotionally heavy subject matter. Crack the Skye was such a departure, but we learned a lot about ourselves from that. We’re taking those sensibilities and using them with more upbeat, loud and crazy riffage.”

Though Dailor was mum about the details of the tracks, he did reveal that new song titles include “Blasteroids” and “All the Heavy Lifting.”

“There’s some stuff on the new one that I feel like is totally different for us, and will surprise everybody,” he adds. “Maybe in a good way or maybe in a bad way, but everything that’s on there is stuff that we really love.”

So I listened to some of that stream stu posted in the 2011 thread... it actually sounds alright to me. Maybe I'm just expecting a different animal now than when I listened to Crack the Skye, but this didn't strike me as too "nu-metal" or too mainstream hard rock. It actually sounds a little punchier than their last one, but this is only based on partial listens to the first few tracks.

the production is appropriately slicker considering the producer and the major label. Sounds sort of like Deftones at times? My reference point for slick-production hard rock/metal doesn't go much further than Tool's post 1996 output and Metallica's Black Album.

FWIW, I really dug Crack The Skye.

considering my 2011 music listening attention span, I don't see myself listening to The Hunter more than a few times.

while i do dig some of the melodic bits and songs on this new album, i have to wonder....'where the fuck is the heaviness?' they used to be this mammoth, powerful band, and now a lot of their sound is this annoying riffing, radio friendly guitar tones, and powerless vocals. i don't even really see it as getting mellow, but just losing what made them a great band in the beginning. heavy, monumental riffs and songs.

Wow, that post makes it sound like you've really never heard Black Sabbath. Like, at all.

FWIW, I really dug Crack The Skye.