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Mastodon: Uphill Battle
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 17-Nov-06 @ 11:57 AM|
After tackling fire and water on their previous records, prog-loving, classics-reading heshers MASTODON graduate to the major leagues as they attempt to conquer the earth, with plenty of stories--and fragrances--in tow. STORY: J. Bennett Mastodon guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds is relaxing in the back lounge of his band's tour bus, eating Sour Patch Kids, drinking beer and watching the Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home. It's about 3 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon in Seattle, and less than four hours from now, Hinds and his bandmates--bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders, drummer Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher--will take the stage as part of the Unholy Alliance Tour alongside Thine Eyes Bleed, Children Of Bodom, Lamb Of God and Slayer. Despite the impending sonic circus, Hinds' mood is remarkably serene--at least until the entire bus starts shaking as if gripped by an earthquake. For a fleeting second, Hinds seems vaguely nonplussed; then a sly smile creeps across his face. "Oh, that's Andy, our tour manager," he explains in an affable Southern drawl. "Sometimes he jumps up and down on the bus steps so the whole goddamn thing shakes. When I'm sleeping in my bunk, it makes me think that someone's fucking." Hinds has just inadvertently set himself up for the next question: Have you ever actually had sex in one of those bus bunks? "Of course, I have," he says. "We've got the condo-sized bunks, but you know, I've done it in the smaller ones, too. Where there's a will, there's a way." Hinds' explanation for carnal pastimes pretty much sums up Mastodon's attitude toward just about everything. In the mid-'90s, Dailor and Kelliher left their hometown of Rochester, New York, and moved to Clinton, Massachusetts, to join guitarist/vocalist Steve Austin in the noise-metal revolving door that is Today Is The Day. Meanwhile, Hinds and Sanders were slugging it out in various bands in Atlanta's underground circuit. As legend has it, the two musical teams met in 2000--after Kelliher and Dailor quit Today Is The Day and moved to Atlanta--at a High On Fire show in Hinds' basement. Two critically acclaimed, impossibly dense and remarkably devastating metal albums (2002's Remission and 2004's Leviathan) and an EP (2001's Lifesblood) later, Mastodon were being hailed as "the next Metallica" by various British publications, touring with Slayer (on the 2004 Jagermeister bill), upending the stage on last summer's OZZfest, and being invited to play the prestigious U.K. festival All Tomorrow's Parties in 2005, which was curated that year by the Mars Volta's Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar A. Rodriguez-Lopez. Then, after five years and many albums sold with Pennsylvania-based death metal-and-grindcore powerhouse Relapse Records, Mastodon signed a deal with Warner Bros. and finally left their van (affectionately known on the touring circuit as "the Fart Box"), back in Atlanta. "We had a really shitty contract with Relapse," Kelliher explains. "We've sold over 100,000 records on that label--and that's just in the United States--and we've never got a check from them. I'd be 50 years old, still touring, and probably never see a penny. With Warner, hopefully we can make more fans and actually do this for a living, because it's been a hard six years, man-traveling around in the fucking van, sleeping on floors." Which isn't to say that Mastodon are toning down their act for a payday. Even a casual listen to Blood Mountain, which contains some of the band's most dizzying, difficult, and ultra-progressive music to date, should satisfy the most skeptical of message-board mama's boys that Mastodon are moving onwards and upwards in every conceivable fashion. "No one sells out just because they sign to a major label," Kelliher offers. "I mean, if all of a sudden we came out with a Blink-182 record, I'd have to be like, 'Yeah, we're selling out--we wanna move some records.' But listen to the new songs. If I heard some kid call me a sell out, I'd punch his face in." For the rest of the story, pick up AP 219 below... |
