Mastodon have expanded on their recent plans to unleash some “brutal” new music, explaining that they’re eyeing 2020 for the release of their new album.
It’s currently been just over a year since we last received new music from Mastodon. Back in September of 2017, the band released Cold Dark Place, their second EP, and first release since Emperor Of Sand back in March of that year.
Since then, the band have been busy touring the world, including a stopover in Australia for the first Download Festival last year. However, while the group revealed that they’ve got some music on hand (which they describe as being “as heavy as I’ve heard us in a while”), it seems a full album won’t be around until next year.
Speaking to Rock Sverige, drummer Brann Dailor explained that while the band are indeed working on a new album, they’re “not very far” into it just yet.
“I had a few riffs and went to Bill [Kelliher, guitar] and said, ‘I’ve got these riffs.’ and he went ‘Well, I’ve got this riff that fits with that…’, like we do and then we started working on it,” Dailor explained. “It yielded something really cool and we all liked it.”
“Brent’s [Hinds, guitar] got a ton of crazy stuff [that’s] just wild – I’ve never heard anything like it – and so does Bill and so do I. We all just kind of have the same kind of deal.”
Check out Mastodon’s ‘Toe To Toes’:
Regarding the recent news of the band planning to release a “brutal” new song, Brann Dailor explained that things didn’t quite align before they kicked off their European tour.
“We wanted to release it right ahead of this tour and we were trying really hard and we had one foot in the studio and one foot on the airplane coming to Europe and it just didn’t really come together as quickly as we wanted it to,” Dailor explained.
“It’s finished, the song is fully finished and it’s mastered and ready to rock but we’ll just have to wait to release it.”
“It would’ve made sense to release it ahead of this tour because we have Scott Kelly [of Neurosis] with us and he sings on some of it, so that would’ve been cool. We missed by a week or something and then we were stupid and went and blabbed about it like it was going to be a done deal.”
“We thought it was going to be done sooner, but there were some circumstances that got in the way, unfortunately, but it’s still a kickass song and it’s pretty heavy.”
Sadly, the “circumstances” that Dailor refers to may be referring to their longtime manager Nick John passing away from pancreatic cancer back in September. Just a matter of days earlier, Mastodon had cancelled a run of shows with Dinosaur Jr., citing a “critical situation of a member of the Mastodon family.”
While a full album doesn’t look likely within this current calendar year, it does seem as though we’ll have a new track from Mastodon before too long.
Check out Mastodon’s ‘Show Yourself’:
