The Melvins (left to right: Dale Crover, Steven Shane McDonald, Buzz Osborne) have been doing things their own way—with varying degrees of ‘success’—for over 40 years.
Melvins "Working The Ditch"
Tarantula Heart is the veteran avant sludge-metal band’s 27th full-length record since their debut LP in 1987, and their 18th with label Ipecac Recordings. They obviously practice a sort of creation that is at odds with the traditional contemporary studio and band business model. Some people might just call it flat-out weird. It’s not uncommon for bands to go three to five years without new material and milk each album cycle for a couple more. So, why produce and release so much music if you don’t have to? Maybe the more interesting question to answer is: If you care about making music, why wouldn’t you?
“It’s a really weird record,” says Osborne. “I wasn’t sure what Ipecac would think. We turned it in, and they were like, ‘This might be our favorite one you’ve ever done.’
“We’ve done almost 30 albums, depending on what you count as an album, and at this point, the idea of doing things like I’ve always done, it doesn’t really excite me too much. I’m always looking for something new, some new idea: see if we can do this, see if we can pull that off. There’s enough bands out there doing traditional music. People shouldn’t expect us to.”
McDonald—who’s been with the band since 2015 and is also a member of punk icons Redd Kross—puts it simply: “It was the Melvins yet again finding a different way to skin a cat.”
“We’ve done almost 30 albums, depending on what you count as an album, and at this point, the idea of doing things like I’ve always done, it doesn’t really excite me too much.” —Buzz Osborne
By the band’s count, Tarantula Heart is their 27th LP of original material in their long and storied career.
If Tarantula Heart sounds at times like listening to a group of musicians simply bashing out ginormous riffs and exploring how far they can push things in a jam space, well, that’s pretty spot-on. The record was created primarily over two days of jamming with both Crover and Mayorga on their own kits at Melvins’ rehearsal space in an industrial area in the San Fernando Valley, which they share with long-time producer Toshi Kasai. Melvins have a history of playing with two drummers at the same time. For nearly a decade starting in 2006, Crover and Coady Willis both thundered along behind the band. “It’s like you’re riding this gigantic beast,” says McDonald of playing with two drummers. “It’s like an earthquake.”
The jams were unstructured and random, but afterward, Osborne took the audio files home and combed them for ideas. He’d find five- to seven-minute sections that stuck out, then isolate the drums and write new riffs, solos, and melodies overtop of them. Good friend and WE Are the Asteroid guitarist Gary Chester swung by to help fill out the chaos, and Osborne and Kasai traded off roles as either string-strummer or pedal and amp knob-turner to create “white noise insanity.” “I know I’m onto something in the studio when you’re not playing the guitar but there’s so much amp noise that it sounds like a vacuum cleaner,” says Osborne. Later, he stitched the ideas together to create the Frankenstein monsters on Tarantula Heart. By the time Mayorga and Crover heard them, they were entirely different songs.
“It’s like you’re riding this gigantic beast. It’s like an earthquake.” —Steven Shane McDonald
That process would be off-putting for many musicians, but Melvins aren’t terribly serious in the studio, says Osborne. He dislikes the self-importance that the environment can promote in musicians. “I feel privileged to be in a situation where I can do this for my living,” he says. “I don’t lose that perspective on it but like, I want to have fun, and I’m really happy I’m here.”
Part of the method behind Osborne’s madness is that he believes musicians will perform more purely, more excitingly, if they don’t have to adhere to any framework. “If you let people own the songs in some way, you’ll get a better performance out of them,” says Osborne. That’s a philosophy he picked up from David Bowie. Osborne claims that when Bowie handed guitarist Adrian Belew a tape of songs to learn, he told him, “Play them like this or better.”
Most of the material on Tarantula Heart came from open-ended jams at the Melvins’ rehearsal studio, with Ministry drummer Roy Mayorga doubling Dale Crover’s thunder.
Photo by Tim Bugbee
And for Melvins, that ethos doesn’t end when the song is finished. Osborne believes that songs aren’t just allowed to change after they’re recorded, but that it’s necessary for them to do so. When Osborne was a kid, his favorite band was the Who, and when he heard their 1970 live record, Live at Leeds, he was thrilled by how different the songs sounded. Bowie’s adventurous live recordings, too, were instructive. “I learned that lesson really early on, even before I played guitar,” he says. “The live experience is something different. If you go by the record, we’re playing [our songs] all wrong. Things grow. I’m not married to any kind of conventional thing when it comes to how we play live or anything like that.
“The idea that we would want to translate perfectly and exactly how we do it on a record is completely absurd to me. I’ve heard bands say, ‘Well, how are we going to pull that off live?’ Don’t worry about it. Change it. Who cares?”
“I know I’m onto something in the studio when you’re not playing the guitar but there’s so much amp noise that it sounds like a vacuum cleaner.” —Buzz Osborne
Osborne’s unshakeable approach feels like a threat to a modern music industry that, under the boot of a ruthless market, balks at risk and favors a sure thing. And while the Melvins have built a successful, long-lasting career doing their thing, they’ve also watched their peers rocket past them into the mainstream. Crover played drums with Nirvana while they were recording the songs that turned into their debut LP, Bleach, and Osborne was friends with Kurt Cobain, introducing him and bassist Krist Novoselic to Dave Grohl. Like Nirvana, Melvins signed to a major—Atlantic Records—and seemed poised to join their grunge and punk pals atop the charts. But after four years and three records (plus one farther afield release, Prick, which the band released under the name ƧИIV⅃ƎM, allegedly to avoid breaking their contract with Atlantic) the label dropped the band.
The fact of their trajectory versus Soundgarden’s or Nirvana’s is more a curiosity to Osborne than anything else. “We were much weirder than those bands that commercialized it in a way that we never did or never could have,” he says. “You just carve out a spot with all that in mind. The funny thing about all that was that I was making a living playing music before those bands ever got big. It was already working on a smaller scale.”
Buzz Osborne's Gear
The Melvins came up in the same scene as grunge legends Nirvana and Soundgarden, bands that Osborne says were “smarter” in figuring out how to commercialize gnarly sounds.
Photo by Joshua Jennings
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company King Buzzo Standard
- Electrical Guitar Company King Buzzo Signature
- Electrical Guitar Company Wedge
- Gibson Firebird
- Gibson Flying V
- Gibson 50th Anniversary Pete Townshend SG
Amps
- Hilbish Design Preamplifier
- Tyrant Tone 2x15
- Tyrant Tone 2x12
Effects
- Hilbish Design Pessimiser
- Hilbish Design Compressimiser
- Hilbish Design Deathimizer
- Dunlop Cry Baby
- MXR Blue Box
Strings and Picks
- Ernie Ball Skinny Top Heavy Bottom
- Tortex Triangle Pick .50mm
Over their years on the road, Osborne has converted McDonald to his strategy of only carrying gear that can be replaced at a moment’s notice from any generic music store. It’s largely the result of brutal mishaps—McDonald guesses that around four of Osborne’s vintage Les Pauls have had their headstocks broken by various airport authorities and baggage handlers. Any TSA agent can open your guitar case upside down, McDonald notes, but he also appreciates the reality check of the approach. “If you get hooked on something that seems like it has that invisible secret mojo, then it’s hard when that object lets you down and you feel like you can’t replace it easily,” he says. Now, McDonald tours with an Epiphone Thunderbird 60s bass that he bought off of Amazon. “If worse came to worst and I needed another one of those on the road, I could have one shipped to the next Holiday Inn Express,” he says.
“I’ve heard bands say, ‘Well, how are we going to pull that off live?’ Don’t worry about it. Change it. Who cares?” —Buzz Osborne
Osborne will still bring new Electrical Guitar Company instruments on the road, probably because they’re virtually indestructible. Built in Irondale, Alabama, they borrow from (and in some cases replicate) the Travis Bean-style aluminum builds which have long been favored by offbeat noise-makers. Osborne counts a couple signature models with EGC—a fitting collaboration for one of guitar music’s freest spirits.
Osborne says people still approach him to praise what they believe to be a tone summoned by a Les Paul ripping through a Marshall, a combination that these days prompts Osborne to recoil: “God, wake me up later,” he groans. These days, he’s pretty sure of what he doesn’t want in his sound. But what he does want can be trickier. That can change from night to night, hour to hour.
“I’m one of the weirdos that likes brand new stuff,” says Osborne. “I don’t know. It’s fun to keep moving forward.”
Steven Shane McDonald's Gear
On the road, Osborne and McDonald stick to either new, easy-to-replace gear, or bomb-proof kit like the aluminum and plexiglass guitars from Electrical Guitar Company.
Photo by Chris Casella
Guitars
- Epiphone Thunderbird 60s bass
Amps
- Darkglass Electronics Microtubes X 900
- 8x10 cabinet
Effects
- Boss PH-3 Phase Shifter
- Electro-Harmonix Pitch Fork
- EarthQuaker Devices Hizumitas
Strings and Picks
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinky Bass (.050-.105)
- Tortex Sharp Pick .88mm
YouTube It
Melvins are just as weird and heavy as they were 40 years ago, as this 2023 live set at Germany’s Freak Valley Festival demonstrates.
If you were to ask my wife, “What two things sum up Chris?” … she’d likely respond with “grilled meats and heavy metal.” So, given the chance to interview the self-appointed (and unchallenged) founders of “Drive-Thru Metal” that solidified their crispy claim with classic cuts “Frying Pan,” “Sweet Beef,” and “Pair-a-Buns,” I ordered a full plate.
The thing is, you don’t just interview guitarist Slayer MacCheeze and bassist Grimalice. Not because they’re from the “bowels of outer space” and don’t speak or understand English. They converse quite well. But these seasoned freaks don’t do anything for free. Everything’s on the menu and it’s all for sale. Thankfully, minutes before doors opened at Nashville’s longstanding rock beacon, Exit/In, Mac Sabbath’s techs Bill Woodcock and Jonathan Hischke summarized their monster masters’ tangy tone tools. The flash-fried, seedy conversation quickly taps some key signature gear of another Sabbath that equally sweetens and thickens the band’s sound like a condensed and chilled milkshake. Plus, there’s a story about how one fateful Black Friday deal provided an iconic, golden-arch bass. Here’s to a fun-hearted Rundown with the Milky Way marauders that fight back against stale food and rotten riffs. And by the end, we bet you’ll be saying “I’m loving it.”
Brought to you byD’Addario XS Coated Strings.
Space-Traveling SG
“I don’t know much about these guitars, but legend has it, Slayer MacCheeze came through the time-space continuum with a guitar in each hand,” states MacCheeze tech Bill Woodcock. With no help from Woodcock, we can deduce this devilish doublecut has an eerie lineage descending from (or influenced by) an early 2000s Gibson Tony Iommi SG that was possibly grabbed during the first full production run of signature models for the other Sabbath’s riff lord. This cherry cruiser rides in standard tuning, and all Slayer’s beefeaters take Ernie Ball 2223 Super Slinkys (.009–.042) for optimal cheese shredding.
From Parts Unknown
This blackheart has some DNA particles from the Iommisphere, but has been updated and intensified with a set of active EMGs that char MacCheeze’s sound to a well-done crisp. This is Slayer’s main C# guitar.
The Wham of That Burger Man
Slayer decided to do some covers on this run (Kiss and Motorhead), and he needed something unusual for those special songs. So, MacCheeze tricked his tech Bill to borrow the hammer of the gods of ground chuck—his Gibson Custom Shop ’64 Lonnie Mack Flying V. The whammy bar that was Mack’s signature addition to his Vs has been removed for use as a spatula.
Burger Stack
After several tours supported by a Soldano Avenger—a 50W head featuring the heralded SLO-100 circuit—MacCheeze is plugging into this Marshall 1987X 50W plexi reissue, because the Avenger was burnt to a crisp during rehearsals. The modern plexi hits a custom 2x12 cab and a Fender 4x12 that was a cabinet for a solid-state M-80, but appears to have been customized by a stripe-shirted burger bandit who later sold it to MacCheeze.
Secret Weapon
Woodcock—not knowing how to make a Marshall melt like a Soldano or even a Laney LA100 BL—uses this JHS Little Black Amp Box to attenuate the plexi so it can sizzle like a SLO-100.
Slayer MacCheeze’s Pedalboard
The Soldano Avenger required no pedals (other than the Vox 847A Wah). However, Woodcock scrambled to build this board for big Mac. The burger man has a tray of greasy tone treats including a TC Electronic Spark Mini Booster, Ernie Ball Ambient Delay, Dunlop FFM2 Germanium Fuzz Face Mini, and an Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer. Wireless and tuning duties are covered by the Shure GLXD16 Guitar Pedal Wireless System, allowing MacCheeze to shred here, there, and everywhere.
Taste Bud Cashes In on Turkey Day
Like his guitar-playing weirdo brethren, Grimalice (an overgrown and questionable taste bud) refused to talk to PG, but we found Ampeg-hoodie-wearing grifter Jonathan Hischke nearby and convinced him to cover peculiar purple’s setup. Shady character Hischke believes Grimalice scored this unique M-style bass during a Thanksgiving Day sale at Sweetwater. It’s completely stock except for the fretboard being painted barn-red, leaving the playing surface tacky as tar. Don’t let Grimalice’s lackadaisical demeanor fool you. He likes a good tussle when tangoing with his instruments.
Did Somebody Say M?
It’d be hard for any human or alien to miss these golden arches from this solar system or beyond.
Never Say Fry
If Grimalice was from this universe, you could understand why he’d have a 4-string modeled after a ’70s custom piece used by Geezer Butler for Black Sabbath’s Top of the Pops performance of “Never Say Die.” But he’s not lord of this world nor from it, so we must assume this stripped stallion that has more definition than a Merriam-Webster Dictionary gets worked for the lower-tuned jams.
Bat, Please!
Grimalice has never met an animal he wouldn’t grill, fry, or sauté, and a bat is no exception. So flying vermin decorate his fingers’ dancefloor.
Spooky Stack
The large, lavender governor of gustation plugs his doom brooms into a Fender Bassman 100T bruiser that feeds an Acoustic B410C that seems to have come from the same sandwich-stealing gear hoarder that sold Slayer his M-80 4x12.
Grimalice’s Pedalboard
Putting all the toppings on his beefy bottom-end are these to-go boxes that include a DigiTech FreqOut, an Electro-Harmonix Steel Leather Bass Expander, a Doc Lloyd Photon Death Ray compressor, a Broughton Audio Always On High Pass Filter, an Aguilar Tone Hammer preamp, an EarthQuaker Devices Park Fuzz Sound, a Behringer BEQ700 Bass Graphic Equalizer, a Mantic Effects Vitriol, and a Dunlop Geezer Butler Cry Baby Bass Wah. And like MacCheeze, Grimalice employs a Shure GLXD16 Guitar Pedal Wireless System.
Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher (guitar), Troy Sanders (bass/vocals), Brann Dailor (drums/vocals), and Brent Hinds (lead guitar).
For reasons that transcend the hassles of a pandemic lockdown, Hushed and Grim, Mastodon’s eighth and most wide-ranging and ambitious album, also went through a prolonged incubation period. It started, like most of the band’s projects, in the wake of tragedy, with the passing in late 2018 of their longtime manager and family friend Nick John, following a battle with pancreatic cancer. They responded with “Fallen Torches,” a song they tracked with Neurosis frontman Scott Kelly, just a few months after John’s death.
Mastodon - Pushing the Tides [Official Music Video]
“Fallen Torches” wound up on the 2020 compilation Medium Rarities, but it gave Mastodon the spark to begin thinking about a bold, concept-driven statement album dedicated to John’s memory. And Hushed and Grim, despite its title, is anything but quiet. It’s the mammoth, multi-layered sound of a band that’s working through its collective grief while feeding a ravenous hunger for experimentation and new directions. Clocking in at nearly 90 minutes, the double slab ambushes you with genre twists and turns—from the Crimson-esque psych flavors of “Teardrinker” to the amped-up hardcore groove of “Savage Lands”—even as it rewards you with special guests (Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil on “Had It All” and Southern rock rebel Marcus King on “The Beast”) and sonic gems galore.
When asked why every Mastodon album seems to come across as a deep and intensely personal experience, guitarist Bill Kelliher doesn’t flinch. “That’s the connection we have with our fans,” he says. “They kind of expect it by now from us—that emotional bond, that realism. I mean, everybody goes through it. Everybody has lost someone, or knows someone who had cancer, or who died in a car accident or some unspeakable tragedy. We just spill our guts about it. It’s almost medicinal.”
“I’ve had those Marshalls for a while. I bought them from Ruyter [Suys] from Nashville Pussy, who bought them when they were on tour with AC/DC, so they were actually Angus’ [Young] amps!” —Brent Hinds
In the grip of a creative torrent that yielded 25 demos, the band made a savvy move by recruiting producer David Bottrill, well-known for his work with Peter Gabriel and King Crimson, for tracking sessions at their own studio, West End Sound in Atlanta. “On one level, I wish we had pulled David in right away,” says lead guitarist Brent Hinds, “so when we were about to do the demos, that would have been the album, you know? But he is top-notch, no question. He’s a really cool human being, and he’s just great at what he does.”
Botrill quickly honed in on Mastodon’s enduring strengths: the vocal powers of drummer Brann Dailor and bassist Troy Sanders, and, in particular, the yin-and-yang symbiosis that fuels Hinds and Kelliher as guitar players. Where Kelliher is the more cerebral and deliberate of the two, Hinds plays like he’s about to burst into flames at any moment—and yet they gamely collaborate on riffs that writhe and dip with a deep-seated sense of melody, harmony, swift-picked precision, and endless groove. (The oft-quoted analogy is the legendary twin-guitar attack of Thin Lizzy’s Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham, and the comparison fits.)
TIDBIT: Mastodon’s eighth studio album, Hushed and Grim, is a tribute to their longtime manager and friend, Nick John, who passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer. It was produced by David Bottrill at Mastodon’s own West End Sound in Atlanta.
With this in mind, Botrill encouraged both guitarists to push their sound further and explore more amp combinations and effects. “We really fine-combed through every single possibility of every song,” Kelliher explains. “I have this little floor pedal with four switches, and you can plug in four cabinets with one head and compare them very quickly. When David first showed up, we spent a day doing that, and he’s like, ‘Well, your Marshall [JCM 800] sounds great with the Friedman cabinet, and your Friedman [Butterslax] head sounds great with the Marshall cabinet.’ And then I had a Mojotone cabinet that I used with my [Friedman] BE Deluxe. So we had a nice big, thick sound for all the rhythm stuff.” (Kelliher has just collaborated with STL Tones to release a signature ToneHub Preset Pack—a plug-in suite that features all the setups he used for Hushed and Grim.)
He points to “Pain with an Anchor,” the molten leadoff cut from Hushed and Grim, as a prime instance of a new effect helping to guide his rhythm part, which he played on one of his signature ESP Sparrowhawks, a standby for most of the album. “In my head, I always heard more of a sitar-like sound,” Kelliher says, “so I bought an Electro-Harmonix Ravish [Sitar emulator]. It has a million settings, but luckily David had the patience to sit there with me and turn knobs while I played it. I wanted to keep it pretty clean, except for the very end of the song, which is this big, doomy chugga-chugga thing, so it sounds super heavy and percussive when that section comes in.”
Brent Hinds’ Gear
Brent Hinds riffs aplenty on one of his preferred Gibson SGs at Detroit’s Royal Oak Music Theatre in 2017. He opted for a vintage 1963 Gibson SG Junior on Mastodon’s new album, Hushed and Grim.
Photo by Ken Settle
Guitars
- Banker Custom Hammer Axe
- Banker Custom V
- Electrical Guitar Company Signature Custom V
- Epiphone Signature Flying V Custom
- 1963 Gibson SG Junior
- Gibson Custom Silverburst Flying V
- Gibson Les Paul Gold Top
Amps
- Orange Signature Terror
- Diezel VH4
- Marshall JMP Super Lead
- Fender Princeton Reverb (vintage)
- Marshall cabinets
Effects
- Dirty B Hinds Mastodrive
- Boss DD-6 Digital Delay
- Boss RE-20 Space Echo
- Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer
- ISP Decimator
- Jim Dunlop 105Q bass wah (wide sweep)
- Line 6 DL4
- MXR Phase 90
- TC Electronic Flashback
- TC Electronic Corona Chorus
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario EXL145 Heavy (.012–054, .011–.052)
- Dunlop Yellow .73 mm Tortex
Hinds, although perhaps less enamored of exotic effects, nevertheless mixed it up with his choice of guitars, among them a vintage 1963 Gibson SG Junior, a custom Banker V, a Les Paul Goldtop, a Telecaster B-bender owned by Marcus King, and a Stratocaster owned by Banker’s Matt Hughes. (Hughes was also a source for a fleet of Fender ’57 amps that appear on the album.)
“I do play through my Mastodrive on ‘More Than I Could Chew,’” Hinds clarifies, citing the overdrive pedal, designed by his company Dirty B Hinds, that figures prominently on one of the heaviest-treading anthems on the album. “The landscape is really big on that song, with a lot of cool moving parts. And I’m pretty sure I was playing one of my JMPs mixed with the Diezel VH4. I’ve had those Marshalls for a while. I bought them from Ruyter [Suys] from Nashville Pussy, who bought them when they were on tour with AC/DC, so they were actually Angus [Young]’s amps! They’ve got a history, and they sound great.”
“Everybody has lost someone, or knows someone who had cancer, or who died in a car accident or some unspeakable tragedy. We just spill our guts about it. It’s almost medicinal.” —Bill Kelliher
All that heavy mojo invariably finds its way into the solos. Hinds dials in a remarkably buttery and bluesy tone, with just a hint of ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, toward the end of the doomy ballad “Skeleton of Splendor,” while his tasty Hendrixian vamp on “Sickle and Peace” gets a reverse delay treatment from Botrill that helps transport the song into a resplendently cosmic headspace. Further on, Marcus King brings an elastic, Carolina-fried slide to “The Beast,” and Kim Thayil turns back the clock for a wah-soaked euphoric wail on “Had It All.”
“That song is about loss,” Kelliher says, “and I figured Kim could relate, and would be the perfect guy to play an emotional solo.”
Of course, this wouldn’t be a Mastodon album without their reliance on D standard tuning (with some darker variations that include drop C and drop A), which naturally lends itself to the moody timbre of Hushed and Grim. For Kelliher, “Pushing the Tides” is the standout.
Bill Kelliher’s Gear
“I have this little floor pedal with four switches, and you can plug in four cabinets with one head and compare them very quickly,” says Bill Kelliher. He recently colloborated with STL Tones to release a signature plug-in suite that features all the setups from the new album.
Photo by Ken Settle
Guitars
- ESP Sparrowhawk Signatures
- ESP LTD Signatures
- ESP Eclipse (Silverburst double-cutaway)
- Banker Custom Excalibur
- Dunable Custom Gnarwhal
- First Act custom 9-string
- Dunable Custom Gnarwhal
- Gibson Signature “Halcyon” Les Paul
- Gibson Les Paul Custom
Strings
- D’Addario EXL140 (.010–.052)
Amps
- Marshall JCM800
- Friedman Signature Butterslax
- Friedman BE 100 Deluxe
- Fender Vibro-King (formerly owned by Duane Denison of Jesus Lizard)
- Silvertone 1464 Solid State 100
- Marshall and Friedman cabinets
Effects
- Line 6 Helix with HX Stomp
- Electro-Harmonix Ravish Sitar Emulator
“A song like ‘Roots Remain’ [from 2017’s Emperor of Sand] has that same feel,” he says. “I’m repeating myself a lot, but you know, look at the Ramones. They took the same three chords and played them in a different rhythm, and it’s a different song, and no one ever notices [laughs]. So there are certain notes that I know in my head that when I play them together, it gives me this sad feeling. When I’m doing a dissonant chord, or dissonant notes, sometimes it’s a feeling like your ship is sinking. And in my head, I have these categories of what I can see on the guitar. It’s like, this song needs fear, this one needs sadness, this one needs regret. I’ve gotten to where I can kind of conjure that up with my hands.”
It’s not a stretch to refer to Hushed and Grim as Mastodon’s version of Quadrophenia or Physical Graffiti, and that’s primarily because the band itself is expanding its sonic horizons more noticeably than on any other album they’ve done to date. When you’re open to embracing the energy, grief has a way of drawing out your most combustible and authentic mode of expression … but it’s not a crutch you can lean on for too long. At some point, catharsis and redemption must take hold.
“In my head, I have these categories of what I can see on the guitar. It’s like, this song needs fear, this one needs sadness, this one needs regret. I’ve gotten to where I can kind of conjure that up with my hands.” —Bill Kelliher
“When we lost Nick and then the lockdown happened. Everyone needed that time to deal with a lot of things, you know?” Hinds observes. “I think that was good for us. We’d been going at a thousand miles an hour for like 20 years, so everyone needed that time off to just chill a little bit. It was really nice to be able to sit around and just focus on some music for a change.”
With all those years in the trenches together, Mastodon are probably more focused and sure-footed than they’ve ever been as a band. That cohesiveness and confidence shine through now that they’re taking the stage again, and it’s lifting their fans right up along with them—for plenty more raucous trips ’round the sun, we expect. Better buckle up and hold on.
Mastodon - Live 2020 [Full Show]
In this recent performance for Adult Swim, Mastodon take all the loss and pain from the last few years and bring catharsis to the stage, with a neon glow and their elephant-sized, multi-layered sound.