Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher recently said the band would like to get some new material out in the world this year. Kelliher later mentioned that he's been very influenced by Turnstile, and has been trying to write music that "comes out swinging."
Now in an interview with Loudwire, Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor has clarified that Mastodon isn't just writing short and punchy songs for the sake of writing short and punchy songs. Instead, Dailor said Mastodon would like to steer away from the longer and more dramatic songs found on their most recent albums, and focus on music that's "a little shorter and a little punchier." And in the world of modern Mastodon, "shorter" could mean three or four minutes.
"That's not necessarily a desire of mine, so, speaking off the cuff, I think that's what one member wants to do," said Dailor. "Whatever the committee decides is good. You can talk all day long about what you want to do in the band and what you want things to sound like, but when you sit down and start writing stuff, you just go for what you dig and things fall into place per usual. Before you know it, you do end up having a 14-minute song on your hands.
"It's not something that you really pay too much attention to. You don't really watch the clock when you're writing music, you just put things together. When things feel right with the way that they're strung together and when everybody's happy with the results and it feels good in the room and we jam through it, you're like, 'Yeah, that's awesome.'
"Then you check it and go, 'Hey, how long was that?' And you're like, 'Oh, it was eight minutes long. Okay, sweet.' You wouldn't trim anything off of it because it felt right. But if it's like 'Crusher Destroyer,' it ends up being one minute and 59 seconds. That also felt right as well, so we have plenty of examples of short, fast, punk-sounding heavy songs in our catalog to go along with the epics.
"It's usually about striking a balance between the two. We always have the big epic and it just so happened that the last album was a very grand gesture to a lost friend of ours. It ended up being a little bit more melancholy at times. What Bill [Kelliher] was kind of referencing was the fact that we just wanted to make something a little shorter and a little punchier and just go out swinging for the next one. That's the intent."
Mastodon is out on the road playing some old school bangers with Gojira and Lorna Shore. Get those dates below and get tickets here.
4/18 Portland, OR Veterans Memorial Coliseum
4/20 Concord, CA Concord Pavilion
4/21 Los Angeles, CA The Forum
4/22 Phoenix, AZ AZ Federal Theatre
4/23 Las Vegas, NV Virgin
4/26 Dallas, TX The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory
4/28 Houston, TX 713 Music Hall
4/29 Austin, TX Moody Center
4/30 Oklahoma City, OK Zoo Amphitheatre
5/2 Nashville, TN Municipal Auditorium
5/4 Boca Raton, FL Sunset Cove Amphitheater
5/5 St. Augustine, FL St. Augustine Amphitheatre
5/6 Atlanta, GA Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
5/7 Asheville, NC Harrah’s Cherokee Center
5/9 Richmond, VA Virginia Credit Union Live
5/10 Baltimore, MD Pier Six Pavilion
5/11 Reading, PA Santander Arena
8/9 Cincinnati, OH MegaCorp Pavilion
8/10 Cleveland, OH Jacob’s Pavilion
8/11 Pittsburgh, PA Stage AE Outdoors
8/12 New York, NY Coney Island Amphitheater
8/13 Syracuse, NY OneCenter
8/15 Detroit, MI Masonic Temple
8/17 Toronto, ON RBC Echo Beach
8/18 Montreal, QC Place Bell
8/19 Portland, ME Cross Insurance Arena
8/20 Boston, MA MGM Music Hall
8/23 Milwaukee, WI BMO Pavilion
8/25 Hammond, IN Horseshoe
8/26 Omaha, NE Westfair Amphitheater
8/27 Minneapolis, MN Waite Park Amphitheater
8/29 St. Louis, MO The Factory
8/30 Kansas City, MO Azura Amphitheater
9/1 Salt Lake City, UT USANA Amphitheater
9/2 Denver, CO Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater
