Mastodon Will Release New Album This Year: "It Was a Hard Record To Make"

"It was a hard record to make. It was a very emotional time for us. I lost my mom; we went through all this turmoil with Brent, and then he passed away. It's been tough. It's all in the music, it's all in the songs, and I'm excited to release it and get it out there into the world because we've been sitting on it for a while. A lot of this stuff, at least the skeletons of what this album is, we've been sitting on for two years now. A lot was going on."

"No. It's all new stuff. Toward the end, unfortunately, it was hard to get him to come down to the [practice] space. He was interested in doing other stuff, which was fine. It was a confusing time. I was the one going, 'Come on, man. Come down. Let's riff.' He was a free spirit. He wanted to ride his motorcycle around and go do this and that. He was wherever the wind took him."

"Unfortunately, it was not down to the practice space to work on riffs. It was a little bit frustrating. I was okay with it. I was like, 'Hey man, everyone can do whatever they want to do in their life. If you're unhappy and not wanting to be here doing whatever, figure out what does make you happy and do that.'"

Mastodon will release its ninth studio album in 2026, the first new LP in five years after 2021’s Hushed and Grim. The album follows a difficult period marked by the loss of Brann Dailor’s mother, the departure of founding guitarist Brent Hinds, the search for a new guitarist, and Hinds’s death in a motorcycle accident. Dailor described the recording as emotionally challenging and said the experiences are reflected in the songs. He stated that the album contains no material contributed by Hinds before his departure, calling it all new work. He also noted that Hinds was often unavailable for practice and preferred other pursuits.

Read at Consequence