It’s been a while since we last heard from prog-metal titans Mastodon. It appears as if that’s about to change.
In a fairly wide-ranging conversation on the RocknRoll Beer Guy podcast, guitarist Bill Kelliher said the group has “20 rough songs” recorded and that they’re working on a song for the upcoming Bill and Ted movie.
“We got asked, like a couple months ago, to be a part of the new ‘Bill & Ted’ movie, to put a song in there,” he said. “So we wrote a song to be in that movie which we’re kinda of wrapping up now. It’s pretty fun.”
Excellent!
Also Read
The 50 Best Songs of 2002
Kelliher also got into the vibe of what a new Mastodon album is going to sound like. He said that before COVID-19 hit, the band had “20 rough songs” recorded.
“I’ve definitely been writing like a madman, like crazy. It’s different than Emperor of Sand. There’s definitely a vibe going on. I don’t know how to describe it,” Kelliher said of the process. “The new record, the stuff I’ve written, it’s not quite as notey as [Emperor of Sand], but it’s definitely got a more like Neurosis heaviness, [with] simplified guitar parts. And Brann [Dailor] … he always demos most of the vocal ideas cause he always has melodies and stuff like that… and he’s been singing on a lot of it, at least for demo purposes. The vocals are kind of like a ‘Asleep in the Deep’ style, kind of Radiohead-ish almost, like real melodic, a lot of vocal harmonies.”
He also talked about Mastodon’s appearance on Game of Thrones, among other things.
Listen to the full podcast below.
