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For Mastodon, 2025 should’ve been a celebratory year. The American metal heroes embarked on a tour of Europe and the States to mark their 25th anniversary, a schedule that included London’s Finsbury Park bonanza with Slayer and Anthrax, plus Black Sabbath’s grand send-off Back To The Beginning. But everything changed in late August, when they landed in Alaska for their final date: “When we got to baggage claim at the airport, to go to our hotel, we found out that Brent [Hinds, former Mastodon lead guitarist/vocalist] had died,” explains singer/ drummer Brann Dailor. “We were in shock. We really didn’t know what to do next.”
Hinds had quit Mastodon, in acrimonious circumstances, five months earlier. His death, at just 51, was the result of a motorcycle accident. The band’s gig at the Alaska State Fair, on 22 August, instead became something of a requiem. At the end of their set, Dailor addressed the crowd in sorrowful tones: “We lost somebody very special to us yesterday. Brent Hinds, one of the most creative, beautiful people that we’ve ever come across in this world, tragically left us… We loved him so, so very much.”
Returning home, Mastodon took stock of the in-progress tracks for their next album. Conceived a year earlier as a return to the mythological realms of their classic works like Blood Mountain and Emperor Of Sand, the songs had already taken on a more personal theme following the sudden death of Dailor’s mother, Michele, in February 2025. Hinds’s passing compounded the album’s new direction.
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“I honestly thought, going into writing a couple of years ago, that we might actually be able to go back to singing about Pegasus and Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster,” Dailor says dryly. “But fate had other plans, as fate often does. Directly after I lost my mom, the whole turmoil with Brent leaving the band went down, then a few months later he passed. All that together was really a tough stretch.
“The fact that Brent passed without reconciling was a real gut punch. I had that kind of heavy weight of grief already draped over me, and I was having a hard time personally. What helped a lot was having Mastodon music to work on. It gave me a focus. So we went over to our practice space and got right into it.”
The resulting Marrow Deep, their ninth studio album, is as fierce as anything Mastodon have put their name to. Guitars burn with savage intensity, drums pound like hammering heartbeats, unusual textures simmer and flash, the alternating lead vocals of Dailor and bassist Troy Sanders are never less than utterly committed.
The band have processed grief and loss elsewhere on record – most notably on 2009 album Crack The Skye, which addressed the suicide of Dailor’s sister, and 2021’s Hushed And Grim, an extended homage to Nick John, Mastodon’s late manager and guiding force – but not quite like this.
“Hushed And Grim felt very much like its title,” Dailor says of Marrow Deep’s immediate predecessor. “It was a bit of a slog at the end of the day, an emotional one for us. And it’s an hour and a half, whereas this one has a lot of different flavours. We didn’t want to make it completely doom and gloom, because we’re still here and very much alive. It’s just that when it comes to writing music, Mastodon has become this eternal dumping ground for all of life’s hardest moments.”
Hinds’s replacement, Canadian guitarist Nick Johnston (initially brought in for Mastodon’s live dates in May 2025), is now a full-time member, locking in with rhythm king Bill Kelliher.
“Replacing Brent is a tough spot for anybody, and Nick’s such a tender soul,” notes Dailor. “But he’s taken everything in his stride. In the studio, he and João [Nogueira, the band’s new keyboard player] provided the crown moulding. Those guys made sure the transitions were as cool as they could be. They’re good at building pre-choruses and being like: ‘What about this crazy jazz chord?’ Nick co-wrote things like They’re Coming For You, but the next record will have a lot more of him in it.”
For the most part, though, Marrow Deep was written by Dailor, Kelliher and Sanders. Lead-off single Your Ghost Again – a raw manifestation of despair, helplessness and regret – sets the charged emotional tone of the album. While recording the song in the studio, Dailor kept seeing Hinds in the corner of his vision, holding his guitar. Or thinking he did.
“Your mind plays tricks on you,” he says. “You think you see somebody, then you look and remember they’re gone for real. It was the same with my mom; I keep seeing her. I was just singing about seeing ghosts.”
Dailor’s mum was a profound influence on his choice of vocation. A classically trained pianist, she fronted a local rock band, called Kaper, in the Rochester, New York suburb where Dailor grew up.
“She was the first person I saw singing on stage, and I was in awe of her,” he recalls. “They did covers of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Rush, Boston, Styx, Cheap Trick, you name it. They practised in our basement just about every night, so there were all sorts of cool dudes hanging at our house with handlebar moustaches and leather vests, and Hells Angels, just blastin’ tunes. It kind of looked like a casting call for Boogie Nights.
“She was a huge Soundgarden fan. When we played with them, she just couldn’t believe it, or that Kim [Thayil, Soundgarden guitarist] had done a solo on Hushed And Grim. She was always excited to hear that I was meeting Alice In Chains and all these big grunge people.”
The significance of Marrow Deep’s title mirrors the extent of Dailor’s relationships with both his mum and Hinds. Mastodon formed when he and Rochester pal Kelliher, with whom he’d played in noisecore bands Lethargy and Today Is The Day, moved to Atlanta in early 2000. They soon hooked up with Hinds and Sanders, bonding over a shared appreciation of Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy and sludge metal avatars Melvins, among others. By the following year, they’d landed a deal with indie label Reptilian, who put out debut EP Slick Leg.
“My mom will always be with me, because the deepest relationship that I will ever have was with her and my dad,” says Dailor. “But Brent got really close. There’s twenty-five years of living with this guy. When you have this otherworldly bond, this really deep emotional place together through music, it’s an elevated relationship.
“But when we did the Ashes Of Leviathan tour [2024, marking the 20th anniversary of prog-metal breakthrough Leviathan], I could finally see that it had run its course with him. We needed some kind of change, because it was dragging everybody down. It became really hard to get Brent to commit to anything. He just wanted to go do his own thing, ride his motorcycle and be a free spirit.”
Officially, Hinds left by mutual consent. He claimed he was kicked out, and delivered some public parting shots – “I won’t miss being in a shit band with horrible humans” – in the aftermath.
“He was a man scorned,” says Dailor. “He said some hurtful things, but I know he didn’t mean it. I was always hopeful that he was going to call me at some point and be like: ‘Dude, I’m done being a ding-dong. Can I come back? I have a riff…’ We were a hundred per cent sure he would’ve done that.”
One of Marrow Deep’s key songs is Snakes For Dinner. Taking its title from a random move that Dailor’s hippie parents once undertook – catching a bus to Arizona after sticking a pin in a map, and having to eat rattlesnakes somewhere along the way – it was fashioned largely by Dailor and Kelliher.
“The lyrical sentiment of ‘When you left you took the moon and stars’ is a reflection of how you feel the day after someone extremely close to you passes,” the drummer explains.
A hard-paced, often melodic piece with a wild keyboard solo, Snakes For Dinner also features guest vocalist Josh Homme. “We’re pals,” says Dailor. “The day after Brent died, Josh called me in my hotel room in Alaska. He didn’t say a word about Brent. He talked about some delicious food that he’d eaten, and that he was upset with me that I never told him how good this particular dish was, that I’d been hiding it from him. He just wanted to maybe make me laugh and check in on me and make sure I was okay. I really appreciated it. So I had him on my mind when we were in the studio: ‘Hey man, I got a part for you…’”
Another old friend, Neil Fallon, returns to growl a spoken-word passage on The Three Fates, a three-part epic that feels like a clamorous psych-prog suite. The Clutch frontman first guested with Mastodon on 2004’s Leviathan opener Blood And Thunder. But perhaps the most telling outside contribution on Marrow Deep comes from a familiar source of inspiration: Black Sabbath. Geezer Butler plays a lengthy, reliably imposing bass intro to The Vanishing.
Fittingly, Dailor is wearing a Sabbath vest – black, of course – while talking to Classic Rock at the band’s hotel in Copenhagen, where they’re in the midst of a run of European festivals.
“There’s a place nearby that we always go to when we’re here, called War Pigs,” he tells us. “They specialise in Texas barbecue. This vest is the one I wore at Back To The Beginning last year. My mom got it for me. She passed before the concert itself, but she was so excited that we were doing it. She was crying when I told her.
“Mastodon has always been immersed in Sabbath, but around the Back To The Beginning concert, and even much prior to that, we were listening to them non-stop,” Dailor explains. “Watching Sabbath at that show, I was like: ‘Man, Geezer is crushing it, he’s so good. He needs to start a new band tomorrow!’ Mom was such a huge Sabbath fan. And Geezer, in particular, was one of her favourites. I didn’t even tell him any of that. I just asked: ‘Do you want to do this?’
“The Vanishing was very Planet Caravan, with the vocals being affected through the Leslie [rotating] speaker in a similar way,” he continues. “For me, the song is basically about going into the cosmos, into outer space, and seeing my mother and my sister as two constellations. And making sure that my mom’s constellation found my sister’s. That’s wishful thinking, but I thought it was a romantic and beautiful sentiment.”
As you may have surmised, there’s a lot to unpack on Marrow Deep. Mastodon have been through a lot in the past couple of years alone – further drama informs the powerful In The Ruins, about the destruction of Sanders’ house in a Florida hurricane – but making music together continues to act as both emotional release and creative communion.
“We love writing music together, and I’m still excited about what’s around the corner, the next riff to get stoked about,” affirms Dailor.
For now, though, Mastodon are readying themselves for the Poisonous Weapons tour of the US this autumn. Beyond that, says Dailor, “the goal is to have a big old European go-around that’s not festivals. And we’re currently kicking around the idea of bringing a special guest along to do some Brent songs. I think that would be cool.
“We can’t not play The Czar or The Last Baron or Colony Of Birchmen or Oblivion. All those songs that Brent blessed us with his beautiful voice. But going on stage feels good right now, playing Your Ghost Again and dedicating it to Brent, just kind of getting everything out in the open. I think we’re all feeling a lot better”.
Marrow Deep is out now via Loma Vista.
