Mastodon are locked up in an Atlanta studio working on pre-production for a new album. Noisecreep caught up with drummer Brann Dailor who gave some hints as to what fans can expect from the new record:
What the process of recording is like this time around:
"We've got a ProTools rig set up and [guitarist] Bill [Kelliher's] been learning how to use that," Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor recently told Noisecreep. "We're recording bits and pieces and stringing up three or four riffs together and testing them out. It's super-heavy and it sounds killer, so it doing what it's supposed to do. It's doing what every other Mastodon song has done for us. We really just try to play music that we dig and that's bad-ass. Our approach has always been exactly the same, and we've learned that we need to do it that way. Otherwise, it's just not right."
On the type of sound the band is going for this time around:
"It doesn't seem as proggy. There's moments, but it seems more riff-oriented. It seems a little more stripped down. [2004's] 'Leviathan' was a little more stripped down, and it feels like that to me. Everything always changes once you go in the studio, but at the moment it seems like a really super-heavy Led Zeppelin or something. It has a lot of that [John] Bonham-esque groove to it, but really heavy and dark. I really like playing like that, and when it goes into those parts, I'm psyched."
On the concept of the record:
"It's all worked out. I don't want to talk about it yet, though. It's not totally ready, but it's gonna be cool. I feel like it's a classic story about redemption. It's a mythology that's invented because we care so deeply as human beings for one another, it's hard to think that you just go into a hole [after you die] and that's it. So you want to see your loved ones be exalted in some way, or be a part of something that's much more grandiose."
I am completely on board for a new Mastodon record. I went back and listened to Crack The Skye again recently, and it definitely holds up, but at the same time, I'm ready for MORE! Hopefully this will surface in 2011.
