Photo by Jimmy Hubbard

Mastodon is a heavy-metal band from Atlanta. They live at El Myr, wrote a song called “Mother Puncher,” and think upside-down rainbows are totally underrated. So we sat down with bandmates Brent Hinds and Brann Dailor as they geared up to headline Atlanta’s very own Scion Rock Fest.

Vice: Who are you excited to see at the upcoming metal fest?

Brent: I’m most excited to see Nachtmystium because I’ve never seen them and I really like their albums. I’m stoked.

Brann: Pretty much everybody. The lineup is incredible. A lot of our friends’ bands are playing so it’s going to be one of those fests where it feels like a class reunion. Neurosis, Converge, High on Fire… Just about every single band is one that we’ve toured with or played shows with. I think the people will get rocked by all the bands. It seems like it’s going to be lots of fun.

You guys are headlining, right?

Brann: I feel honored to be able to play last. But I guess it is a little nerve-racking to play after Neurosis. They’re going to destroy. We’re going to have to go on after them and pick up the pieces somehow.

Brent: Yeah, but I wanna go on at three in the afternoon and get drunk and watch everyone else play.

So you guys finished your new album, Crack the Skye. When is it coming out?

Brent: March 24th.

I’ve heard it’s all about wormholes, astral travel, and Stephen Hawking. Is that right?

Brent: Yeah, it has a lot of those things going on.

Brann: It’s a combination of the 70s prog influence on the storytelling side and all the King Diamond records. It gives the listener a little something more to do with the album itself.

You like wormholes?

Brent: Yeah, we like wormholes. We like holes. We’re really into holes, and no matter what kind of hole it is, we wanna talk about it.

Out-of-body experiences too? Like astral travel?

Brent: Yeah. You don’t like astral travel, Ellis?

I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it, I guess.

Brent: You’ve never thought about astral travel?

No.

Brent: You’ve never had a dream where you were like, “Goddamn, that was so fucking crazy. I think I went to another planet last night”?

I guess so. One time I had a dream that my grandma was a gigantic peacock and I talked to her.

Brent: See, that’s some astral-travel shit right there.

And what’s with the Elephant Man? You have three songs about him.

Brann: The Elephant Man goes with everything. It’s possible one day we’ll come out with an Elephant Man EP, a nice mellow record dedicated to his memory. He didn’t make it onto the new album but we’re not done with Sir Joseph Merrick, not at all.

Brent: Yeah, we have a song on all our other albums about ol’ Joseph Merrick. He’s just an inspiration to us all. He’s the Elephant Man. You don’t dig him?

He’s OK.

Brent: Each time we have an album cycle, we have a little nod to Joseph Merrick just because of what he went through in his life. We find his story really amazing. I don’t know what our fascination with that fucking freak is. He had the craziest physical deformity of all the time, the rarest disease, but the way he kept his composure the entire time, how he just reminded people he was human, not some circus freak. It’s just something we gravitated toward.

So, after your album comes out, you’re going on tour with Metallica?

Brent: We’re going to Europe in June to do eight headlining shows before the Metallica tour. Until then, we’re doing the Scion fest and then a press tour. By then the album will be out and people will be digging on the music.

You know, they had a personal band therapist for a while. Do you think Mastodon will ever need a therapist too?

Brent: I seriously doubt it. Maybe we would need our own if we were making as much money as they were. But they were making so much money they didn’t even know how to act anymore.

Brann: Yeah, I think we’ll be all right. We pretty much tell each other when we’re getting on each other’s nerves. If anyone screws up they always come back and apologize and then we’re all hugs and kisses.

Their therapist seemed like a buster.

Brent: Yeah, he sucked.

It just seemed like they’d try to record, fight about it, and then go and talk about their feelings to the therapist.

Brent: It’s just bizarre. We don’t do that. We get our job done. We don’t go to cause a dramatic scene like a bunch of jackasses. We go get our shit done so we can get outta there so we can go have a good time elsewhere.

Yeah, I used see you guys at El Myr hanging out together all the time.

Brent: I don’t understand why Metallica weren’t good friends, but somewhere along the way something must have happened to make them hate each other. I don’t know what that was, but I know that somewhere along our way nothing bad has ever happened to us and we all still love each other as brothers.



When I found out I was going to be interviewing you guys, I drew a symbol for your band, if you want to start using it. It’s an upside-down rainbow with “Mastodon” written above it. It could be really good.

Brent: You know we’re into upside-down rainbows. You know it!

Brann: That’s one of our old jokes. I drew one on the bathroom wall of the 40 Watt and put our name in bubble letters over it. You know, upside-down rainbow, upside-down satanic waterfall… pretty evil stuff.

I figured. Maybe one of your songs from the new album could be about it.

Brent: Well, there’s a lot of talk of rainbows in the new album. Basically we just go off on rainbows.

That’s good. I don’t think metal bands give rainbows enough attention.

Brent: No, we talk about upside-down rainbows all the time. The right-side-up rainbows aren’t our thing. Anything is good that’s upside-down and backward. We like to play all our music backward and have all our imagery upside down.

Brann: A lot of heavy bands forget how powerful rainbows can be, especially in the dark. Dio knew the importance of a rainbow.

I looked up mastodons, the prehistoric animals, and found out that the word “mastodon” literally means “nipple tooth” in Greek.

Brent: Yeah, me and Troy found that out years ago. We get a big kick out of that. A lot of people call us Nipple Tooth or NT.

I also discovered that mastodons became extinct 10,000 years ago, possibly partially due to tuberculosis. Do you guys have any signs of tuberculosis?

Brent: No, but I did go to jail one time and they gave me a tuberculosis test. They stuck a needle in my arm and pushed some liquid in my flesh that made the skin bubble. So I know I’m clean. I’m totally clear on the tuberculosis.

Good. So you guys were up for a Grammy a little while back.

Brent: That’s the moment my parents knew the band wasn’t just a hobby or a joke anymore. I was thankful for that Grammy nod just to have one reason to get my folks to stop asking me to go to school, like a backup plan. But I got a backup plan, I got a backup bag of weed.

Brann: It was cool. We went and it was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever been to. But I was stoked because they give you a medal with a ribbon around it and you can wear it around town. I wore that thing for two years.

Speaking of going around town, what are your favorite places in Atlanta?

Brann: The Claremont, of course. It’s a good spot to bring visitors so they can get a taste of Atlanta nightlife at its finest. El Myr is pretty much our go-to bar in Atlanta. Bill, our guitar player, had a job there early on and when I was extremely poor I’d go there and he’d hook me up a burrito pretty much every day. I think El Myr is responsible for making sure we’re alive at this point.

Brent: My favorite place would have to be El Myr. Then the Earl, the Flat Iron, and Midway. For the most part I kind of hate Atlanta.

Really?

Brent: Yeah, the crime here is horrible. I’m just not down with that. But my dad did just give me a .38 revolver, I’m gonna fucking blast a motherfucker. I’m gonna start doing some Dirty Harry vigilante shit around here.

You could be Atlanta’s hero.

Brent: Yeah, I’ll be the hero and I’m gonna start wearing a cape and shit.

INTERVIEW BY ELLIS JONES