Last time we spoke with a member of Mastodon was when we interviewed Troy Sanders in person on the Rockstar Mayhem Tour in 2008. It was our biggest interview to date, and we were a bit starstruck. MetalSucks has grown leaps and bounds since then, and Mastodon have too; they’ve toured the world several times over and become without a doubt one of the biggest metal bands on the planet. This Mastodon interview session’s subject was guitarist Bill Kelliher; having now interviewed a number of my heros I wasn’t nervous like I was back in ’08, but it’s always a pleasure to speak with someone whose art you respect so much.

When I’m connected with Bill he’s cruising around Atlanta in his ’64 Pontiac Catalina “because it’s a beautiful day.” Doing nothing seems to be Bill’s preferred activity when he’s not on the road, which doesn’t happen much these days with Mastodon’s busy schedule. After his cruise and our interview, Bill was planning on a quiet night at home with the family: “I’ve got 2 little boys and usually it’s a birthday party or something that we’ve got planned – dinner parties or whatever. It’s always something. My wife and I are just like ‘let’s have a night to do nothing tonight.’ Sit on the couch maybe and watch a movie with the boys.” With Mastodon’s new album The Hunter coming out on September 27th and a headline tour with The Dillinger Escape Plan and Red Fang following shortly thereafter, Bill better squeeze in these nights while he still can.

The Hunter takes Mastodon in a different direction than their past two magnus opuses (opii?). None of the record’s songs are over 5 minutes long. According to Kelliher, the band just “dumped out [their] bag of riffs” and assembled them into songs that worked without worrying about a grandiose concept. “Can we just write a record and have fun and not have to have all these crazy stories and imagery? Can we do without that on this record?” Indeed they can and indeed they have. Kelliher’s thoughts on that and more after the jump.

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Believe it or not, Axl and I don’t spend all day and night in front of our computers. So thankfully for us we have readers like Joe Caperon to fill us in on things we miss, like this German MTV interview with Mastodon at this past weekend’s Rock am Ring festival, in which drummer Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher reveal that the name of Mastodon’s new album is The Hunter. Dailor revealed that the band had just finished tracking the record with producer Mike Elizondo before leaving for their current European festival tour.

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In this post-Crack The Skye world, a band like American Heritage is like sweet relief to lovers of angular, raging, uber-macho post-metal: Throughout their forthcoming sophomore album Sedentary, the Chicago quartet show little trepidation as would-be inheritors to Mastodon’s now-vacant throne. And one could say Ameri-Heri makes good economic and practical sense, too, as Sedentary employs a full whack of guest bassists (including members of Murder Construct, Black Cobra, Exhumed, Nachtmystium, and Buried At Sea) and provides a venue for Mastodon axeman Bill Kelliher to do a fucking guitar solo for once.

Sedentary is out March 1 on Translation Loss (pre-order here) but because we at MetalSucks believe in awesomeness, we present to you this exclusive advanced listen to its opening jam “City of God” (below). It’s a first taste of what MS scribe Satan Rosenbloom calls his favorite album of the year so far. He won’t be the only one.

[this streaming promotion has ended]

–ADF

When I describe Def Leppard’s “Excitable” as a deodorant jingle with a great bridge or, say, compare an entire city to the dark lord’s soiled undergarments, it’s in good humor and with humane understanding. Hey, no offense! We all have flaws. I understand this; most people on the internet understand this. Others induge themselves in some unearned personal offense and send out a lot of negative energy in response to such colorful but justified appraisals. Don’t get mad, people.

Okay I confess. I only wrote all that cuz I’m trying to properly relax you for some more gratuitous Chicago bashing, so let’s just get to it! Check out American Heritage frontman Adam Norden detailing the inspiration for their forthcoming album, Sedentary:

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Kip sang the praises of Today is the Day’s In the Eyes of God back in 2008, but the album has just been re-issued by Relapse in a spiffy expanded edition that includes bonus tracks and Steve Austin-directed DVD. It’s streaming here, and if for some reason you’ve never listened to this record before, you should so that ASAP.

Promotional materials refer to the 1999 release as “noisecore,” which I guess is as apt a description of the album as you’re gonna get — but I’m a little wary of affixing the “core” tag to this music, for fear it might turn people off, and, really, TITD are genre-benders anyway. The album traffics in the same questioning of religion that’s so prevalent in death and black metal, but the music also contains elements of grind, crust, and drugged-out expermental shit. Regular readers of MetalSucks will know that I appreciate music that maintains a strong structure even as it thinks outside the box and kind of does whatever the fuck it wants, incorporating a vast array of influences; In the Eyes of God certainly meets that description.

And if that wasn’t enough to make you wanna check it out, this particular incarnation of TITD featured Mastodon’s Brann Dailor and Bill Kelliher.

Listen to In the Eyes of God here. And in case you’ve never read them, here’s a completely fucking insane interview I did with Steve Austin in 2008, and here’s a completely fucking insane guest blog he wrote for us later that same year.

-AR

According to a couple of eyewitness accounts the latest trouble in the Mastodon camp has been caused not by ailing (but recently recovered!) guitarist Bill Kelliher, but by the Tasmanian devil himself, Brent Hinds. Seems that Hinds sabotaged the band’s performance in Oakland, CA over the weekend by appearing to be incredibly intoxicated (shocker), fucking up songs intentionally, and eventually storming off the stage leaving the rest of the band stranded. I’ll let MS Maniac “The Big Chazboski” take it from here:

Brent seemed off from the beginning, staggering a bit and not stepping up to sing his lines. I’m pretty sure he damn near collapsed at least once.  Troy once ran to the mic, nearly pushing Brent over, in an effort to sing Brent’s lines.  Brent continued to throw in wild solos where there should be words, throwing his guitar around and running off stage.While there seemed to be major technical issues, mostly with his monitor from what I could tell, he became less and less involved in the performance to the point where he even stopped playing and simply yelled in to the mic something around the lines of “I love heavy metal…..No I don’t.” Even more telling, he managed to screw up the intro to a song (that I can’t remember right now) to the point where Brann was looking through his cymbals in hopes of figuring out what was happening. He eventually completely lost his composure, throwing down a mic stand and storming off stage.

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Good news, everyone; after being forced to cancel one show and skip another (possibly more?) — at which Baroness’ two guitarists filled in – hospitalized Mastodon guitarist and mustache king Bill Kelliher is back performing with the band on their current U.S. tour with Baroness, Between the Buried and Me and Valient Thorr. Reader Brett S. reported that Kelliher performed with the band Tuesday night in Tucson (though his pot-addled brain couldn’t remember Bill’s name) while uber longtime caller Ryd1ZZ reported the same in San Diego last night. So all appears to be well with Bill… or, at least he’s well enough to perform. Though my ultimate dream of watching guitarists from Baroness, Between the Buried and Me and Valient Thorr fill in for a full set of Mastodon tunes will not come to fruition, I think we can all agree that this is great news.

No official word has been released yet as to why Kelliher was hospitalized in the first place. I’ve heard rumors including conditions as severe as pancreatitis and diabetes, and of course there’s always the old “partied to hard” speculation, but the latter seems unlikely to cause a three-day hospital visit. Whatever the case, if Bill wanted to the world to know, we’d know; so I guess we gotta respect his privacy. Glad to have you healthy and back, Bill.

-VN

Despite guitarist Bill Kelliher’s hospitalization, the show must go on: the band made their scheduled tour stop in Grand Rapids, MI last night, but Bill Kelliher did not perform. MS readers Matt Gaipa and Jared Lucas reported that both Peter Adams and John Baizley from Baroness each performed two songs with the band — “Oblivion” and “Divinations,” then “Quintessence” and “The Czar,” respectively — after which Mastodon finished out Crack the Skye without the assistance of a second guitar player. I’d forgotten that Mastodon are essentially a five-piece these days with a touring keyboard player in tow, so while I’m sure the keys helped fill some of the cracks I’m also sure that Kelliher’s presence was missed (especially during “Sleeping Giant,” if they played it… his delayed guitar intro is essential!). Regardless, both Matt and Jared said that Mastodon absolutely killed it.

Big ups to the boys in Baroness for learning those songs on such short notice and filling in. I wonder if, as the tour goes on and if Kelliher still isn’t able to rejoin the band, the members of Between the Buried and me and Valient Thorr will also chip in towards a full set? That’d be a pretty special thing to see, albeit coming at the cost of someone’s health (which makes it a lot less cool).

No word yet from the Mastodon camp or anyone connected to Bill. Get well soon, dude.

-VN

ADDENDUM from our own Antonin Skullia, Esq.:

According to various eyewitness accounts, Mastodon’s show on Tuesday, April 27th at the Water Street Music Hall in Rochester, NY (with Between the Buried and Me, Baroness and Valient Thorr) was canceled due to guitarist Bill Kelliher’s hospitalization. The show was originally going to be moved to Wednesday, April 28th — an off-date on the tour — but according to the venue website has now been postponed until May due to “ongoing illness with Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher.” While Mastodon’s own official site confirms the initial rescheduling to April 28th, it does not comment on the most recent postponement or Bill Kelliher’s condition.

No other information is available. The hospitalization could be linked to the alcohol-related illness that forced Kelliher to sit out the band’s European dates in 2008, but there’s no evidence available to either support or shoot down any such rumors. All we can really do right now is wish Bill a speedy recovery and hope that he’s well enough to continue the tour tonight in Grand Rapids, MI — the band’s just not the same without him.

-VN

Thanks: Bryan Kemp, Alex Johnson