Mastodon is currently touring with guitarist Nick Johnston in place of the late and great Brent Hinds, who tragically died earlier this year in a motorcycle accident. Johnston hasn't officially been named a member of Mastodon just yet (if he will at all), though Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher revealed in an interview with the Sixty Scales And The Truth podcast that Johnston is contributing to the new record.
"Well, we're kind of still in the writing process," Kelliher said. "Honestly, I've been writing for the new record since Hushed And Grim. Even before Hushed And Grim was finished, I still had extra songs, and then I just keep writing more and more and more. So now we've got, like, 20-some ideas. 'Cause I own a studio as well — not just the one in my basement, but I have a proper studio.
"So we'll demo the stuff at my house and we bring it to my studio with my engineer, and then we bring in Nick and João ['Rasta' Nogueira], the keyboard player, and we start jamming the songs and say, 'You wanna add something? Please add whatever you want in here.'"
Kelliher also noted that Mastodon has been plenty busy, and the new material takes time: "It's only been a slow kind of process because you take one song a day and you've got 20 songs, it's taken 20 days and we've been touring and we've been busy. We're in a good place, though. I feel like the stuff that I've written, mostly Brann and me, it's really good.
"It still needs the touch of the other guys, but there's also these whole new songs that Nick is bringing in, like, 'Hey, I've got this whole song.' I'm, like, 'Okay, cool. This is great.' So it's a combination of both. It won't be until the next record, after this one, I think, where it really will be more of kind of more Nick being in there. He's gonna be in the new record, for sure, yes. But he's writing like crazy. I'm writing like crazy.
"It's like a race. I don't know — not a race, and not a competition either — but we're just so full of energy. We just don't wanna get lost. I'm, like, Let's concentrate on the songs that we have that we had before Nick joined and get those out with their help.' And then it'll be more of a cohesive, like, 'Oh, this is definitely… Part A is Nick and part B is Bill and part C is Brann and part D is Troy.' You know what I mean? It's a little lopsided still, because he's only just joined the band. But it's still gonna be fucking awesome. I'm so excited. Everything that we've been demoing is incredible."
He added: "I just feel like we've been given a booster shot of adrenaline, like, 'Kaboom!' It's kind of a clean slate. Now we can really open our minds and really just kind of write whatever we feel like writing without worrying about what another person's gonna think. Because that was a real challenge for a long time, and now I feel like it's just like a new, fresh start. It's the easiest way to put it."
Personally, I'm stoked for Johnston to be on the new Mastodon record. He's not Brent Hinds, but he is Nick Johnston and that's a whole separate flavor that'll be interesting to hear. Though I'm sure plenty of you reading this are in the "NO BRENT NO MASTODON" camp, to which I say – shut up. You haven't heard a single note of Johnstodon (that's their new band name).
