MASTODON Guitarist Talks Next Album In New Interview

February 16, 2011

Brad Olsen of The Silver Tongue recently conducted an interview with guitarist Bill Kelliher of Atlanta progressive metallers MASTODON. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Silver Tongue: Is there any new material in the works for MASTODON?

Bill: Yeah it's been a while since our last record and it's time to get back to Earth with MASTODON. We've all got our side projects, but MASTODON is our main focus. We got together once and threw some ideas together.

The Silver Tongue: Do you have the concept yet?

Bill: Yeah we do. Brann [Dailor, drums] just had me over a little while ago and he was showing me some of the stuff he was working on and I was like "Woah. This is some crazy shit." It's gonna be an even crazier head trip, journey.

The Silver Tongue: Can you tell me anything specific about the concept?

Bill: Well not a lot since we haven't even really written much music to it yet. But it's gonna be about rebirth, but not in the sense you would think. It's about what man goes through, the evolution of man.

The Silver Tongue: What percentage of the riffs would you say you write?

Bill: When we first started I wrote a lot of the riffs. Like [2001's] "Lifesblood" and [2002's] "Remission" are a lot of me. On the last record [2009's "Crack the Skye"] I contributed a few riffs to [the title track] "Crack the Skye" and "Ghost Of Karelia", but most of that was Brent [Hinds, guitar/vocals]. Me, Brann and Troy [Sanders, bass] had been practicing for about two months before and we had some written, but what Brent had just flowed so well that we decided to save what we had and use his. I've got tons of riffs stored up though. I'll probably write a lot more riffs on the new record. I've got riffs from like ten years ago that'll just pop up sometimes and we'll be like "Dude, you remember that riff from 10 years ago? Yeah, I think it will fit here." It's really spur of the moment when we write. It's just whatever comes out of our fingers.

The Silver Tongue: Will the new album be more like [2006's] "Blood Mountain" then?

Bill: Well, we've got a few songs that didn't make it onto "Blood Mountain" and some of those riffs will show up on this new record.

Read the entire interview from The Silver Tongue.

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