Earlier this month, Vince wrote about Mastodon’s love of Feist, and the apparent desire of both artists to collaborate together in some way; at the time, Feist even claimed that Brent Hinds had expressed interest in covering the song “The Bad in Each Other,” from her recent album Metals, while she might cover “Oblivion,” from Mastodon’s Crack the Skye.

Well, hey, guess what? It looks like something along those lines might actually happen. During a recent interview (video above), Troy Sanders said that both artists are attempting to get together a split 7″ for the 2012 edition of Record Store Day, which takes place in April. Metal Insider has helpfully transcribed the relevant portion of the interview in case you are somehow too much of a fat ass to watch a thirty second clip:

Click to read more…

Before getting through this article on Metal Insider I had to Google who Feist is (she’s the one who did that “1234″ song that was in the iPod commercials a few years back). I’ve got a big thing for light, female-fronted pop with a little bit of soul (Sara Bareilles, Alice Smith, Adele, Sia, etc), and Feist isn’t really doing anything for me… BUT nevertheless I’m still pretty tickled about the idea of a Mastodon + Feist collabo. Here’s a comment from Feist via Hitfix after her and Brent Hinds had a run-in when the two performed on the same edition of the UK show Later… With Jools Holland:

“Brent [Hinds] and I were nodding at each other, and he’s like, ‘Nice riff,’ and I’m like ‘Nice tone.’ So backstage I’m thinking about letting these two worlds collide, how they should collide, so I’m like ‘How about Metals [Feist's latest album] meeting metal?’” Feist explained, saying she sort of pitched a split record to Mastodon. “Brent was like, ‘Well, I do like that “Bad in Each Other” song, I could see that.’ Maybe now I will look into learning to cover ‘Oblivion’… or anything off [The Hunter]. That album’s amazing.”

I have no idea what a Feist / Mastodon collaboration would sound like, but seeing as both artists are not just still relevant but both in their primes, I know this: it’ll kick the shit outta LuLu as far as left-field collaborations go. It’s all just talk right now and it’ll probably never happen, but it’s fun to think about listening to a way lighter Mastodon with a female singer.

-VN

Speaking of supergroups that might actually be super…

Back in June, Mastodon’s Brent Hinds revealed that he was working on a new project with Ben Weinman (The Dillinger Escape Plan), Eric Avery (ex-Jane’s Addiction), and Thomas Pridgen (The Mars Volta) — which certainly sounds like a line-up worth getting all hot n’ bothered over. Of course, that’s four very successful dudes who all have their own stuff going on, and so, as Hinds put it, “it’s been hard to get together.”

But now it looks like there may be some progress being made! Writing on DEP’s official website over the weekend, Weinman dished the following info:

Click to read more…

Remember that television commercial that Brent Hinds did for Atlanta dive bar Elmyr last month? It was a lotta fun, right?

Well, it ain’t got shit on the outtakes from the ad, which have just been released online. As is so often the case with something funny, the less I tell you about this in advance, the more you’ll enjoy it… so just watch.

It’s amazing that Hinds didn’t get an Oscar nomination for his performance in Jonah Hex, isn’t it?

-AR

Thanks to Newmerica for the tip!

So how’s this for a new supergroup? Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds, The Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Ben Weinman, The Mars Volta drummer Thomas Pridgen, and and  former Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery are apparently joining forces to create a new project. And while I’m always a little bit suspicious of mega-all-star-team-ups like this — for every Murder Construct, it seems like there are ten The Damned Things — it’s hard not to get excited by that line-up.

Click to read more…

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.

Click to read more…

MetalSucks recently polled its staff to determine who are The Top 25 Modern Metal Guitarists, and after an incredible amount of arguing, name calling, and physical violence, we have finalized that list! The only requirements to be eligible for the list were that the musician in question had to a) play metal (duh), b) play guitar (double-duh), and c) have recorded something in the past five years. Today we continue our countdown with Mastodon’s Brent Hinds…

Everyone knows Brent Hinds is a good guitar player; as the main writer of Mastodon and as the band’s outsize stage presence, the man’s guitar skills need no introduction. But, oddly, it wasn’t until I saw him play with rockabilly side-project Fiend Without a Face in Brooklyn last year, up close and personal in a venue that holds not more than a hundred people, that I was completely bowled over by the man’s guitar prowess.

You know when a couple of dudes are battle-rapping and every time one flings an especially impressive or cleverly worded diss at the other, all the spectators standing around watching erupt in delighted cries of, “Ohhhhh! Ohhh shit!!!”? That’s what it was like watching Brent Hinds slay the living shit out of rockabilly riff after rockabilly lead after rockabilly riff after snaky, wiry, buttery rockabilly lead, except that the delighted onlookers were just one person (me) and instead of saying “Ohhhh shit!” I did so inside my own head. But yeah, that. The dude was on fire. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing not ten feet in front of my eyes, fingers moving like masterfully guided buttons on a player piano, dancing and darting across the fretboard in ways I’d never before imagined. And with so much feeling, this man not impressing with metronome-breaking speed or nut-crushing brutality, but pure guile. He could do no wrong.

Click to read more…

Late last year we had the opportunity to see the amazing Brent Hinds walk his rockabilly and alley cat strut with not one but TWO bands in ONE night at Brooklyn’s intimate Union Pool, when his two side projects Fiend Without a Face (which also features Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor) and West End Motel hit the road for a brief East Coast run. My jaw hit the floor when I saw Hinds jam out those rockabilly rhythms and leads from up-close; it often gets lost in the behemoth that is everything about Mastodon, but good God, Hinds is a positively stunning player of inimitable prowess.

Good news for Fiend Without a Face fans who, like me, had a lot of trouble tracking down their only record; Rocket Science will release a two-CD set on June 7th featuring the lone self-titled Fiend Without a Face record and West End Motel’s brand new debut Don’t Shiver, You’re A Winner. Both bands actually pre-date Mastodon and provide a great look into Hinds influences; stream a Fiend Without a Face song here and a West End Motel song here.

Click to read more…

Melvins’ January 28 show in Los Angeles was a victory lap within a victory lap. It was Stoner Witch night, the final installment of a month-long residency that found the still-relevant, still mindfucking metal crew play a different Melvins album in its entirety each night. It was also a high-profile sendoff to the outgoing Spaceland Productions, which announced they would cede the venue to new management and a new name (The Satellite) not long after King Buzzo and bassist Jared Warren banged their respective ‘fros for the last time.

The short first set was business as usual, including a helping of tunes from their 2010 chart-bottoming album The Bride Screamed Murder, and a killer sludgification of Flipper’s “Sacrifice,” committed to tape on Melvins’ 1992 platter Lysol. The place was packed and sweaty long before intermission hit, and it only got more so once Warren re-entered to begin the bassline to “Lividity,” Stoner Witch’s final track. My girlfriend opted to avoid heat exhaustion and moved upstairs to watch the festivities from behind a glass wall.

Click to read more…

Yesterday, Sergeant D. posted a Metal Edition of the classic parlor game Marry, Fuck, or Kill, and you guys responded, uh, enthusiastically, surprising no one. And because we’re equal opportunity offenders — don’t forget that this is the site which posts leaked naked pictures of women and men alike — we decided that today we should post a metal d00dz edition.

So we sat down with the Mansion’s resident feminist, Leyla Ford, and presented her with some hot metal d00dz for a new game of MFK. Check out the results after the jump…

Click to read more…

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.

Click to read more…

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…

Click to read more…

In case ya didn’t hear, Jonah Hex shit the bed at the box office this weekend, getting trounced by the third film in a kiddie franchise, the fifth film in a different kiddie franchise, a movie based on a thirty year old television series, and a movie with Lars Ulrich in it. I’m sure the Mastodon dudes are humbled to know that the Metallicats can still school them.

ANYWAY, a friend of mine actually did see the movie and gave me a little report. He asked that I not use his name, since he wants to be spared the embarrassment of admitting that he actually paid to see this drek. So I’m not going to tell you his name. It does not rhyme with Rank Friley.

Click to read more…

Yep, we talked a lot of smack on Joey Belladonna this week, much to the chagrin of, well, an awful lot of you. I think we’re done for a little while… but I can’t make any promises. Our job at MetalSucks is to amuse ourselves first and foremost, and, well, we thought it was pretty damned funny. So ppppfffftttt.

Here’s what else went down this week:

• We debuted the title track from Nachtmystium’s new album, Addicts.
• Genetic’s Dallas Coyle called us “influential,” Disfear’s Tomas Lindberg shared some Maryland Deathfest memories, The Austerity Program’s Justin Foley unveiled his top four Taco Riffs, Cynic’s Paul Masvidal got burglarized, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa made some new revelations about L O S T, God Forbid’s Doc Coyle worried about turning into an old geezer, Daath’s Eyal Levi gave us a lesson in stage etiquette, and Batillus’ Geoff Summers gave us a new studio update.
• We spoke to The Melvins’ Buzz Osborne, Periphery’s Misha “Bulb” Mansoor, Testament’s Chuck Billy, and Sick of it All’s Lou Koller.
• We checked out new releases by Korn and Ufomammut and Year of No Light.
• Is Mastodon’s Brent Hinds a Mastodick?
• Sergeant D sez Cunthunt777 are your new favorite band.
• Don’t worry, baby, Dr. Danzig gonna cure what ails you.
• Hot chick loves Nergal, hates the Bible.
• Boy oh boy, do we love the new Limp Bizkit cover art!
• If you’re looking for new band members, don’t do this.

Alright. We’re gonna go get drunk and crank We’ve Come For You All in John Bush’s honor. Have a great weekend, everyone.

-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.

Click to read more…

We got all excited back in September when word first got out that Mastodon are contributing to the score for Jonah Hex, one of the next big graphic novel movie adaptations/franchise hopefuls, which Warner Bros. currently has scheduled for a June 18 release. But we haven’t really heard much about it since then, and, to be honest, I’d kind of forgotten all about Jonah Hex – the only big mega-budget movie opening this summer that I’m really excited to see is Christopher Nolan’s Inception, so I guess thoughts of Megan Fox in a corset lost out to Leonardo DiCaprio’s (apparently literally) dreamy face.

But now New York Magazine‘s Vulture blog has an update on the movie and Mastodon’s score, and they paint a picture which strongly suggests the flick is in deep doo-doo. Apparently it’s been the victim of quite a bit of re-shoots, and Mastodon’s music has undergone some major changes in the process, as the movie’s re-shuffled schedule meant original composer John Powell (the Bourne franchise, the recent How to Train Your Dragon, etc.) had to leave the project and was consequently replaced by Marco Beltrami (who scored the Scream franchise, the last Die Hard movie, and worked on Chinese Democracy). Beltrami, of course, made major changes to the soundtrack, which were hard for Mastodon to keep up with, given their busy tour schedule:

Click to read more…

The new video for Zoroaster’s “White Dwarf,” which just had its premiere on Brooklyn Vegan, isn’t necessarily the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, but there are three aspects of it which I really appreciate:

1. It was clearly meant to be watched while stoned.
2. It pokes fun at the current 3D trend.
3. Brent Hinds being Brent Hinds.

By the way, who else has played God of War III? If they make a movie version of that franchise, don’t you think that they should TOTALLY cast Hinds as Zeus? Totally.

-AR

[Writer and musician Tres Crow comes to us from the excellent blog Dog Eat Crow, for which I just published a Halloween-inspired list of The Top 5 Goriest Metal Album Covers of All Time. What follows is an incredible piece of creative writing written by Mr. Crow based on Mastodon's Crack the Skye. The first part ("Intro") is a true recounting of a run-in we had with Brent "Tasmanian Devil" Hinds whilst visiting Atlanta for the Scion Rock Fest. The rest is all culled from the twisted, Mastodon-induced imaginings of Tres' own mind. It is long, but worth it. Enjoy! - Ed.]

The Mastodon Beard
By Tres Crow

Intro

Before I really get into the meat and potatoes of this thing I think I need to make a little confession: I first became interested in Mastodon primarily because of Brent Hinds’ totally wicked beard. Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t any kind of creepy infatuation, like watching him shower through peepholes type of thing, but more like, let’s say, professional admiration, as in one bearded red-headed dude to another.

You see I am a man of relatively modest bearded means, and though in my chosen field of Banking I am considered a rebel for wearing facial hair so defiantly against accepted business attire and hygiene, when I first saw the tarantula legs Mr. Hinds was sporting from his chin I was totally awed.

Let me break this first meeting down for you: I’m standing in a tiny hole in the wall bar in Atlanta with the esteemed moderators of this very blog, Mssrs. Neilstein and Rosenberg, a bar which has this night been totally taken over by Metal fans of every shape and size on account of the Scion Metal Fest. I’m sipping a beer and feeling extraordinarily out of place in my bright blue rain jacket and neatly trimmed rebel-Banker beard and I keep eyeing all the khaki military jackets and black band shirts and ferocious, tousled facial mats with a mixture of wariness and wonder. Clearly I am in the midst of something extraordinary, beard-wise; from wall to wall there is the most amazing array of goatees, full-on Hemingway bushes, twisty oriental spires descending like stalactites several inches, handlebars like the Hulk used to wear (still does apparently), faces that seem to grow out from the beards instead of the other way around. Hell, there is even the occasional mustache sprinkled through the crowd for good measure. I mean, basically, the place is like a veritable Beard Convention and we’re all milling about, drinking beers and shuffling feet and exclaiming loudly about one thing or another, everyone with the unmistakable posture of someone waiting for something. It’s like we’ve all come together for a purpose that maybe not everyone even realizes what it is yet, but there’s definitely this feeling of purposeful waiting, of expectation.

And then it happens, what we’ve all been waiting for without even really knowing it. Like some kind of verbal version of the wave a rumor starts to spread throughout the tiny place: Brent Hinds is here. I crane my neck to get a glimpse of this Brent guy even though I’m not really even certain who he is.

Click to read more…

On Sunday night we caught the Beard Destroyer 2009 tour with Hull and Batillus (sadly for us, Salome didn’t play that date). It crushed even harder than we thought it would, so we asked our friend, Batillus skinsman Geoff Summers, to do a tour wrap-up for us. We hope you enjoy!

So, here I sit with a mild case of PTD (post-tour depression) writing up this wrap report for the so-called Beard Destroyer tour featuring Salome, Hull, and my band, Batillus. We had some good times, and we had some bad times. It rained. A lot. Everywhere we went. Fortunately, though, the good dwarfed the bad. Let’s recap…

Click to read more…

My favorite cartoon characters are Brent Hinds and the members of Dethklok. Seriously. I once watched Hinds do a belly-flop onto a bar table covered in beer mugs. He came out of a coma and is only sillier for the experience. You could drop an anvil on that dude’s head and all that would happen is he’d see little tweety-birds buzzing around his head. And then he’d write an awesome concept album about them.

So: in what strikes me as only semi-strange news, Mastodon and Dethklok will co-headline a tour this fall, with support coming from Converge and High on Fire. I am slightly miffed that the mighty High on Fire and absolutely God-like Converge are opening for a make believe band, but since it’s Dethklok, I’ll let it pass… this time.

Complete list of dates after the jump.

Click to read more…