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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Today is the Day, 2011: from left to right — Ryan Jones, Steven Austin, and Curran Reynolds. Photo by Karen Novak.

Curran Reynolds is not just a staple of, but a bona fide blessing to, the New York City metal scene. As both the drummer for Wetnurse and the mastermind behind Precious Metal, the city’s “best and longest running weekly event dedicated to heavy music,” the guy is a FORCE, and anyone who loves metal and lives in NYC should be grateful for him.

So. Wetnurse’s follow-up to Invisible City was my pick for Album That Will Fuck Your Face Off in 2011 (and if you’ve never heard Wetnurse before, please please please go listen to the on the second volume of our free NYC Sucks comp), but before that yet-to-be-recorded record ever sees the light of day, Ryenolds and his Wetnurse band mate, bassist Ryan Jones, will appear on another insanely exciting new release: Today is the Day’s Pain is a Warning. This will be Steve Austin’s ninth release for the constantly-pushing-the-envelope outfit, but it will be the first time Reynolds and Jones have recorded with the band — and you can hear the excitement in Reynolds’ voice. He is a huge fan living the dream — he really did get to go and join one of his favorite bands.

As I’m writing this, TITD is about ten days away from completing the album. Immediately thereafter they’re off to do a five-week tour of Europe (get dates here); in typically fuck-nuts TITD fashion, the very first show of that tour will take place at Litla Hraun prison, the only Maximum Security correctional facility in Iceland, which currently holds violent offenders, burglars, and drug traffickers, and Lucifer knows who the hell else. And yet, despite the busy schedule of completing the album/preparing for the tour/praying there isn’t a prison riot, Curran was cool enough to take some time out of his day and answer a few of my questions.

After the jump, read what he had to say about the new Today is a Day album, how he came to join the band, working with Austin and producer Kurt Ballou, and more.

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Two nights ago, Axl, Kip and I and Rob from Metal Injection went out to Union Pool to watch Fiend Without a Face, the rockabilly side-project of Mastodon’s Brent Hinds and Brann Dailor. As I worked my way all the way up to the second row in a crowd of less than 100 folks — packed for the cozy Union Pool — to watch the fez-clad gentlemen roar through their set of rockabilly, I remembered something I’d apparently forgotten:

Brent Hinds is an absolutely incredible guitar player with ungodly talent.

It’s weird that I forgot this fact, seeing as Mastodon’s latter-day music is really proggy and they’ve always been fairly technical (not that kind of technical) in their approach. But standing there watching Hinds’ hands effortlessly glide through modified pentatonic blues runs, complex finger-picking patterns and just straight-up balls out rawk soloing drove the point home once again — Hinds is easily one of the best guitarists in metal today.

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DUDE. I didn’t even know that the Mastodudes had side projects. Did you know? How come no one ever told me? I thought we were friends!

Fine. Whatever. As it turns out, there are not one but two Mastodon side projects, called West End Motel (pic above) and Fiend Without a Face. According to Metal Insider, Brent Hinds plays in both bands, while Brann Dailor is in Fiend Without a Face. And according to The PRP, the two groups are doing a short tour together later this month.

For Mastodon fanatics, it’s a chance to see both musicians play venues far, far smaller than Mastodon have played in years. And while neither band is especially metallic in sound — West End Motel has a country/bluegrass vibe and sometimes even dip into ragtime territory, while Fiend Without a Face, despite their name sounding pretty evil, actually play surf rock — Crack the Skye was by and large not really metal, either, and we all still loved that, because Mastodon rule. So you should still try and show some love, even if these shows will probably be mosh-less.

Here are the dates…

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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

I’ve written before about my affinity for the music of Melissa Auf der Maur, and I know that some people were all,”Hey, this chick ain’t metal.” To which I say: au contraire. Even if her music isn’t always as heavy as a really heavy thing, she’s certainly got the metal in her blood n’ spirit. She fronted Hand of Doom, a (totally killer) Black Sabbath tribute band, and her latest solo album, Out of Our Minds, has a duet with Glenn Danzig, fer Chrissakes!

But in case you’re somehow still too metalier than thou to show Ms. Auf der Maur some love, maybe this will change your mind: She recently hit up the Heavy MTL festival in her hometown of Montreal, and filed a four-part video report from said festival. I’m skipping right to part three below, not because the first two parts aren’t great (Cute Canadian girls with funny accents! WHOO-HOO!), but because I find this interview with Mastodon’s Troy Sanders and Brann Dailor to be really, really entertaining.

Check out the other three video reports here. Melissa Auf der Maur’s latest, Out of our Minds, is out now. And after the jump, in an effort to get you all on board with the program, I’ve posted some more Auf der Maurian goodness…

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One of the best parts of the Tool Lateralus tour cycle was drummer extraordinaire Danny Carey’s drum-off with various guest drummers. Vince and I saw him do it a couple of years ago with a drummer whose name I unfortunately can’t remember, and it was awesome; then, last summer, we saw him do it again with Frank Ferrer from Guns N’ Roses, and it was even awesomer. (And that was when we heard the always-brilliant Maynard James Keenan use the phrase “drumsterbation.”)

But this pro-shot video of Carey drumsterbating with Mastodon’s Brann Dailor is awesomest. I mean, these two fuckers can play, y’know. Now if only they could’ve made it a three-way with Mike Portnoy…

-AR

[via The PRP]

It’s my understanding that Mastodon’s Blood Mountain was a concept album much like Leviathan was. I say “it’s my understanding” because I have no fucking idea what they were going on about. I mean, I get that they were looking for crystal skulls and yadda yadda, but once you get into that whole Lord of the Rings made up creatures and rules I don’t understand territory, you lose me.

It doesn’t look like I’ll have an easier time understanding the band’s new album, Crack the Skye. In between bong rips, drummer Brann Dailor recently hinted at some of this latest offering’s “story” in an interview with The Quietus:

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While we were interviewing Mastodon bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders at this past summer’s Mayhem Festival, our buds at Metal Injection were right across the hall interviewing Mastodon drummer/resident goofball Brann Dailor. As is so often the case with Metal Injection, the interview is entertaining and has an assload of good information in it, including an exclusive reveal about a guest star on Mastodon’s new album.

Check out the interview below, and then head over to Metal Injection for many more awesome interviews, videos, live footage, and all that good shit.

-AR