Over 25 years into their career, Grammy Award-winning rockers Mastodon are more than well-versed in writing and releasing new material. From undulating in the underground to changing the course of heavy music in the 21st century, the Atlanta, Georgia-formed behemoths have relentlessly straddled profound and emotive artistry with searing intricacy and sonic brutality.
The road to album No. 9, Marrow Deep, out today via Loma Vista Recordings, was always guaranteed to be something of an anomaly in the Mastodon universe. With the longest gap between albums to date marking five years since the release of Hushed and Grim, Marrow Deep also unexpectedly carries with it a horde of significant adversity, notably the untimely passing of former founding member Brent Hinds, alongside many other personal tragedies that grazed the remaining core members of bassist and vocalist Troy Sanders, guitarist Bill Kelliher, and drummer and vocalist Brann Dailor.
Borne from darkness and an unwavering bond of brotherhood, Marrow Deep finds a rare balance, bridging Mastodon’s past, present and future into a collection of songs that rattle viscerally while also offering catharsis and some of the group’s most ambitious output to date. For long-time fans, nods to more classic Mastodon sounds will delight, along with new creative injections. For others, the dizzying array of guest features alone on offer alone will stupefy. But closer to home, Sanders reveals with us over Zoom, “the five of us in the band are super happy with it.”
“It’s time for it to be released,” he says.
Mastodon shot in Paris for the 2026 album campaign
“There’s excitement for multiple reasons. Number one, it’s been five years since our last record. And number two, we spent a lot of time writing and demoing songs, which became Marrow Deep. We spent a lot of time recording it. We spent a lot of time mixing it. We actually wrapped up about nine months ago after the completion of this album. So we’ve been working on it, recording it, and sitting on it for a long time. And that just leads up to a great anxious feeling of letting it go out into the world.”
“It’s time to relinquish the power of us sitting on it, creating it and crafting it,” Sanders continues. “One of the best ways I’ve ever heard this put is when you’re an artist, and you could take all the time you needed. But at some point, you’ve got to put the brushes down. Is it going to be a perfect album? And next year, if you could go back and change things, would you? Probably always. But you capture the energy in the moment in time.”
It’s this unique limbo between completing an album and its release that Mastodon have sat in and now perfected time and time again, tracing back to their 2002 debut album, Remission.
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“As you’re building an album, you own it, you’re in control of it”, Sanders explains, “and I think it’s a healthy thing to be happy with it. We’ve all high-fived and hugged, and we’re proud of it. So now you’ve got to relinquish that power and that control and let that thing go get born out into the world. And make some friends, hopefully!”
As the first Mastodon album to ever feature new recruit Nick Johnston (guitar), joining João Nogueira (keys and synths) officially in the band, Marrow Deep also sees the group co-produce along with Grammy-nominated composer, producer and artist Patrik Berger and Converge guitarist/producer Kurt Ballou. But despite some new faces and exploring new sonic spaces, Marrow Deep’s conjuring also sparks magic that unmistakably recalls the band’s formative years.
“João’s been touring with us for five years,” Sanders reveals. “He played on Hushed and Grim, and he’s toured with us ever since. Nick joined us a year and a half ago, and we’ve been touring nonstop around the world with him this whole time. So now there are five of us, and all five of us are very excited to be a part of this. We all realise this is the most important record of our career, and in the early days we were all just itching and scratching to start writing and collaborating and creating this thing.”
“We collectively spent a ton of time and energy to build what this thing is, or what this has become,” Sanders continues. “The mission statement was having all five guys present in the room, in the studio. The ultimate teammates, if you will, and everyone’s looking out for the greater good of the song, ultimately building up to the greatest album that we can create. That gave this revitalised energy that was very reminiscent of when our band first began, when everyone was hungry, and we were all excited.”
“For this record, it was the same thing. We had five dudes in there firing on all cylinders together, very aligned mentally, and everyone wanted to put the time in and put the work in. It just felt like a beautiful rebirth of energy that was a wonderful thing to be a part of.”
With 12 tracks on offer, including earlier singles “Your Ghost Again,” “Snakes For Dinner” and, most recently, “In The Ruins,” Sanders recalls the band had “over 30 songs in demo form from a couple of years ago” which had to be culled down.
“There definitely would’ve been stuff that was cut,” he says, “not because it wasn’t solid material, but maybe just so we didn’t have an album that’s over 60 minutes long. We ultimately decided to work on these 12, thinking maybe the best nine or 10 would make the record. We didn’t actually know.
“But once we turned in these 12 songs to the label, we said, ‘Hey, we love them all, we don’t know what to cut.’ We were initially thinking to get it down to a 50-minute album or something, especially following our last record, which was a double album. The label came back and said, ‘We love all 12, we don’t want to cut anything unless you do.’ And we said, ‘We don’t want to cut anything either!’ We didn’t want to have that argument. So we’re like, ‘If you’re cool with it, we’re cool with it.’ And if anyone in the band really thought one was not up to par or not fitting for the whole record, that would not have been a problem. But thankfully, no one wanted to cut anything.”
Previously bringing guest musicians onto albums in the past, Marrow Deep tantalisingly ups the ante when it comes to Mastodon’s roster of guests, notably Ben Koller (Converge, Mutoid Man, Killer Be Killed), Nate Newton (Converge, Cave In, Old Man Gloom) Joe Duplantier (Gojira), and Neil Fallon (Clutch), as well as returning Mastodon guest turns from Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and Randy Blythe (Lamb of God), as well as a fated collaboration with legendary Black Sabbath bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler.
“A lot of times when we’re writing songs, a certain part will be reminiscent of one of the bands that we love and have toured with and are friends with,” Sanders explains. “Somebody in the band will say, ‘Hey, this part here, that sounds like maybe Neil Fallon from Clutch would have a good voice here, it sounds like a Clutch part.’ It was the same thing with ‘Snakes For Dinner,’ ‘Maybe Josh Homme could do something really cool there. I bet he could. And we know he could.’”
“Every time anyone has this idea, we’ll just reach out to their camp or reach out to them directly. Everybody, that is, except the Geezer thing. The other five or six friends of ours on the record, we just reached out and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this part. Can we send it to you to see if you like it? And if so, would you be willing and able to collaborate?.’ Thankfully, everyone always came back with a quick ‘Yes, I’d love to.’ That’s always a great feeling. It’s friendship first, but we’ve also shared many stages with these bands, with the Gojira, Lamb of God, Converge and Clutch.”
A band who have publicly adored Black Sabbath throughout their career, Mastodon teaming up with one of their long-time icons seems like a no-brainer on paper. But, as Sanders reveals, convincing Butler to take part in Marrow Deep wasn’t a hard sell, with the legendary rocker previously sharing love right back to team Mastodon in his 2023 autobiography, Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath-And Beyond.
“Geezer Butler name-dropped us in his book two years ago as one of his current favourite bands. And then a year later, which was just a year ago, we played Back to the Beginning in Birmingham, England, and we were invited to play that show by the Black Sabbath camp. Our drummer Brann said, ‘We’ve got to reach out to him and see if he’s interested in playing something new because Sabbath’s over, he’s kick-ass up there, he’s crushing it on the bass. He needs to be playing more!’ As fans, that’s what we were thinking. So Brann reached out through management, and man, in no time, Geezer came back with a, ‘Yes, I’d love to.’ It blew our minds. That was seriously a really special moment.”
For a band who have influenced generations of artists through their rich storytelling and contemporary merging of stoner rock, sludge metal and progressive gambits, occasionally tripping into psychedelia and hard rock, playing with some of their own inspirations, past and present, is not lost on Sanders after 25+ years of existence.
“It’s really cool,” he enthuses. “These are bands that we were honoured to share stages with. We were inspired by them, whether they were the headliner and we’d watch them every night and be like, ‘Oh my god, they’re so good, they’re kicking ass.’ Or if they’re the opening band, we’re like, ‘Oh man, we’ve got to play after them?!’ There’s always a lot of respect. But most importantly, it becomes a friendship from that. And when we think of these people in the writing process, it’s really cool and complimentary when we reach out, and they just return and say, ‘Yeah, I’d love to be a part of the Mastodon world.’ It’s beautiful.”
When the time came for the band to decide on which song to release as the first entree for Marrow Deep, the blistering track “Your Ghost Again” was never in doubt as a frontrunner for lead single status.
“We’re big fans of the album as a whole,” says Sanders. “With singles, it’s just like reading a random chapter of a book; that’s kind of the way we view it. We understand what singles are, but ultimately what helped us decide was that it had been five years, we’d gone through a member change, and we just wanted to come out swinging. ‘Your Ghost Again’ just made sense. It’s not the heaviest song on the record, it’s not the slowest, it’s not the wildest. It’s just right in there. It comes out swinging, it gets to the point, it’s got a big, beautiful chorus, and then it gets out.
“It just checked all the boxes of what Mastodon is and what this album is. And it’s like: here’s the first taste and there’s 11 more. Because of that, we were all totally cool with that being the first new song that people had heard in nearly five years.”
In the lead up to unveiling Marrow Deep, Sanders, Brann Dailor and Bill Kelliher also came together to profess and process their shared grief surrounding the loss of their founding Mastodon brother Brent Hinds via a short film The Mastodon in the Room; an intimate exploration into the legacy of friendship and creative partnership, as well as raw discussion about the deterioration of their relationship that would ultimately lead to Brent parting ways with the band before his sudden passing after a motorcycle crash in 2025.
“I think it spanned the whole spectrum of emotion,” Sanders shares of making The Mastodon in the Room.
“But through it all, we were more dedicated and driven than ever. And that’s a very strong and powerful thing to be a part of because, at least for Bill, Brann and me with 26 years in this band, we’ve continued to grow stronger together and we’re better friends now than ever before.”
“We’ve always been great friends, but we just keep cementing ourselves together,” Sanders continues. “Our friendship is beyond deep, and it just keeps getting better. With the addition of João and Nick in the band, this sense of renewed energy is mind-blowing. Through the darkness, it was very positive to all be able to have the opportunity to do this record. But this wasn’t something we were forcing. We all are genuinely invested and want to put the work in and make something that is going to live forever with a lot of beautiful moments.
“We tried to create something super bright out of all the darkness. We’ve always channelled our emotions and our experiences through the art that we’re able to call Mastodon. And that’s a beautiful thing.”
Now venturing beyond a quarter of a century as a band with six Grammy Award nominations and a win, (2018’s Sultan’s Curse taking out Best Metal Performance), as well as hundreds of millions of streams, a relentless touring dance card and, now, a brand new record on the horizon, an inevitable question emerges on the touring front: when will Mastodon return to Australian audiences following their show-stopping sets at Good Things Festival in 2024?
“Australia’s probably in the top three places around the world that we’ve ever been to,” Sanders reveals. “I’m talking everything, the beaches, the food, the sights, and how cool people are. Obviously, the fans too, the fanbase is always very supportive, and they have been ever since the first time we came over to do Big Day Out. I think that was our first time over there for the first few of those. We did Soundwave, and we were lucky enough to play some club tours. And of course, we did Good Things almost two years ago.”
“I think we’ve been lucky enough to visit Australia seven times now, and every time has just been unbelievable. And we always remind our booking agent to keep Australia as a priority outside of North America for us. We can’t wait to go back down there again, it’s always phenomenal.”
