Stalking Sense
Mastodon’s fifth album The Hunter marks a sensational return to the fray by the four-headed Hydra of Riffs! Drummer Brann Dailor explains to BRAD BARRETT, that although tragedy outside the studio walls overshadowed the new LP’s sessions, the band were still deeply focused on making great music.
“We wanted to not dwell in the darkness of the themes that were trying to bring the band down,” asserts drummer, vocalist and co-songwriter, Brann Dailor. Those external factors include the death of guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds’ brother, who the record is named in honour of, as well as another mutual friend, the wife of their accountant to whom the album’s final track The Sparrow pays tribute. These factors combined with tour fatigue from two years on the road touring their last opus Crack the Skye, led to a wish to escape from life for a while. Somehow this turned into making The Hunter instead of taking a break. “It’s something we love and something we didn’t know was gonna be there so quickly,” says Brann. “We planned on taking a big long break, but we didn’t; we made a record we all dug and decided to go through with it instead of hiding it.” Brann explains that they could’ve hidden the record’s existence from their label, Warner Bros, to prevent them from going out on tour again. “But we were bursting at the seams to get it out so I guess we did that for a reason.”
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“We planned on taking a big long break, but we didn’t; we made a record we all dug and decided to go through with it instead of hiding it.”
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www.playmusicpickup.co.uk
astodon’s epic sound has seen the US stoner-rock band enjoying well deserved success but they’ve also had more than their fair share of bad luck. None so much as leading up to their magnificent latest, and fifth album, The Hunter.
To allow full creative release on this album, Mastodon abandoned the conceptual framework that their last three albums relied upon. This was despite Brann crafting a doozie of an idea. “I came up with this grandiose theme, because I thought that’s what everyone wanted. So they said: ‘Yeah that’s amazing!
....Do we have to do that?’ I replied, ‘No we don’t have to.’ As soon as I said that everyone was like ‘Cool.’” Instead, Mastodon could now concentrate on real topics, ones that have universal appeal. The kinds of things that are far and away from Crack the Skye’s astral plane-dwelling, Rasputin- meeting, time-travel adventure, Blood Mountain’s mythological mountain climb or Leviathan’s take on Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick. “We could start singing about some other stuff that’s on everybody’s mind. Like, methamphetamine freaks running about the woods with chainsaws (first single, Curl of the Burl) Having sex in space (Stargasm),” says Brann. So, those are the kinds of things Mastodon think about away from grand storylines? “Yeah, it is. We’re constantly thinking about things of that nature, of the macabre. Those are topics that interest us. You know, sex with clowns. Things like that!”
Whatever dark thoughts may have inspired their latest frenzied inspiration for song material, the music has been opened up too. It’s an album of firsts. It’s
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