The Mighty Mastodon

Did you expect the reaction you got to the last album, The Hunter?
We never really expect anything. The four of us were extremely happy with it. We were very much in love with the record and everything on it. That was the most important thing to us. We had enough trust and faith in our taste in music to believe that if we liked it other people would too, but we never had any expectations. Any other accolades are just a bonus.

The Hunter was not a themed album like previous Mastodon albums. Why was that?
Some of our previous albums, like Leviathan and Crack the Skye, had a very linear dramatic storyline. We decided to scrap any idea that we would have a themed album this time around. We wanted to let any idea fly.

If anybody sparked up a riff or an idea, it didn’t matter if it sounded like it would be on the next Mastodon album or not. If we liked it we let it go and built on it until it became a song. It was very refreshing to approach an album like that, because we had not done that in a long, long time.

The title song is about guitar player Brent Hinds's brother who died in a hunting accident. How important was that tragedy when you were making the record?
It definitely allowed us to be free enough to dive deep and be very personal with the song itself, The Hunter. It is kind of very therapeutic and allowed our music to turn a negative into something very positive.

What are your music influences?
One of the first things we did when we formed was to look through each other's collections and listen to them on heavy rotation. We had everything from Abba to Zappa. We knew we could gel because we loved so many types of music. We were good friends from the get-go. Scouring each other's collections gave us a bigger picture of what we could do together.
Critics reckon that The Hunter is your most accessible album to date. Would you agree?
Completely. The songs start, we get to the point and get out. It is more immediate, more accessible and that's what we were going for.

On previous albums we would beat our heads against the wall by times because we thought "this needs to be longer and needs to have more parts". That worked for us many times, but the last time around, creating The Hunter, we didn't want to do that. We wanted the writing process to be more free. We could come to practice and not spend hours and hours wrapping our heads around one riff like we used to do.

We have more components to our music than just metal. There are a lot of creative influences we have taken from all four individuals, and that allows us not to be pigeonholed as a one-dimensional band.

If we have songs like The Hunter and Curl of the Burl, they will be accessible to many types of people and music fans. We never really want to be tied into just one style or genre because we love so many styles of music as individuals.

When's the new Mastodon album out?
We are using our downtime right now to explore a few ideas and new songs. We get together three or four times a week maybe for six hours at a time. We're slowly but very surely looking at a new album right now.

You're one of the few heavy metal bands to appear on Jools Holland. Did you enjoy it?
When we got invited to do that, being from the States, we were not familiar with Jools Holland whatsoever. Then we were told it was a very important show. We went over with no idea of the magnitude of the show and the incredible diversity that it showcases. It was terrifying but we got an amazing response.

Mastodon play the Academy on June 12th and 13th.