MASTODON Bassist: 'METALLICA Told Us To Keep Flying The Flag'

Dave Maher of Pitchfork magazine conducted an interview with MASTODON bassist Troy Sanders on July 14, 2007 at the Pitchfork Music Festival 2007 in Chicago, Illinois. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Pitchfork: Just from seeing pictures of you guys, I thought [guitarist] Brent [Hinds] would be the most savage member of the band, mostly because of his face tattoo. But after seeing your show, I think it might be you. Do you practice making faces or moves in the mirror?

Troy Sanders: No, not at all. Our music and our live show and everything that we embody is basically just every emotion under the sun that we bottle up and channel out through our music. Off the stage, we're four quite normal goofballs. Our music and our stage show is very intense; it's very demanding. But it's basically because we choose to write this type of music that embodies everything dark and deep and brutal about life that we encounter, which are the same things everyone else encounters. We just take all this, and we channel it through what we call MASTODON. That's why it's like, "Why do you guys scream all the time and play this brutal music that you want to kill yourself to?" It's like, "Well, we don't intend to do that. This is our art form. This is our outlet." If we didn't have this outlet, we would probably be even more disturbed. But Brent is a savage beast. It depends on what kind of show [it is]. This art form of touring conjures different emotions every single day. I was up there having a great time, glad to be here in front of 10,000 people under the sun. I've had a great weekend, a great year. And it sounded okay to me on stage. It felt good. I was just going for it, getting it all out, sweating out all the bad stuff.

Pitchfork: You guys met METALLICA recently, right?

Troy Sanders: Yeah, we just met them on Sunday [July 8 at the Wembley stadium in London, England].

Pitchfork: And you've played with SLAYER?

Troy Sanders: Oh we've played over 150 shows with SLAYER.

Pitchfork: What's it like meeting those dudes?

Troy Sanders: We're friends, like, "Hey Tom [Araya], what's up?" "Hey Troy."

Pitchfork: Is that weird?

Troy Sanders: It was at first, man, because those are the people [whose music] I grew up with, but now we're on a first-name basis with them. We've done six tours, over 150 shows.

Pitchfork: What about the guys in METALLICA?

Troy Sanders: They're cool as hell. They told us to keep flying the flag.

Pitchfork: So the torch was passed.

Troy Sanders: It's not necessarily that the torch was passed, but a piece of the torch was passed. And those guys had heard of our band before. They get to pick their opening bands. They were on stage watching us for the three shows we did last week, and I'll tell ya, that's a little nervous, man. I would not be here today if METALLICA didn't exist, and now they're on stage watching our band and then we're hanging out drinking with Lars [Ulrich] until four in the morning.

Read the entire interview at www.pitchforkmedia.com (scroll down).