MASTODON Drummer Says 'Crack The Skye' Album Was 'A Heavily Decorated Christmas Tree'

MASTODON drummer Brann Dailor spoke to Lou Brutus of HardDrive Radio about the band's recently completed tour, which celebrated the tenth anniversary of its fourth album, 2009's "Crack The Skye".

Asked how the idea for the tour came about, Brann said (see video below): "We were sort of at the end of our tour cycle, so we weren't really gonna go out [again], but then our bass player, Troy [Sanders], was saying, 'Hey, we've got this 10-year anniversary coming up of our 'Crack The Skye' album.' It was one of the pillars of our catalog and one of the albums that turned us on to a whole new group of people, as far as our fanbase and everything, and an album that we all have a deep connection to. So the idea of going out and playing it again from start to finish was awesome. We all were excited about it and wanted to see if we could do a better job at it this time around than we did 10 years ago."

According to Brann, MASTODON had a hard time reproducing "Crack The Skye" live upon the album's initial release.

"That was a heavily decorated Christmas tree, basically," he said. "We put everything in the studio that we could drape on it we did, so you could barely see the tree after we got done putting all the tinsel on. So replicating that live was tough. But this time around, I think that we did a much better job at doing so. With some time behind us, and when you get the opportunity to do something a second time, it's, like, you wanna do it better."

Asked if he learned anything about "Crack The Skye" while preparing for the recent tour that he didn't know before, Brann said:

"I don't think I learned anything new about it," he said. "I remembered some things about it — that it's more of a cerebral album as opposed to like a moshpit album.

"We're used to our audience showing appreciation by beating the hell out of each other, so when they don't do that, you're, like, 'We're doing something wrong,'" he explained. "So it was remembering that when we did that 10 years ago, the first few shows of playing that, people are just kind of watching it and listening and taking it all in. There's a lot going on."

"Our objective going into it was making it an 8-to-80 record and the kind of record you wouldn't be embarrassed… if you were in the band, you wouldn't be embarrassed playing it for David Bowie or Peter Gabriel."

MASTODON and COHEED AND CAMBRIA's "The Unheavenly Skye Tour" kicked off May 28 in Louisville, Kentucky at the Iroquois Amphitheater and made stops in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, and more before wrapping July 3 in Irving, Texas at The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory.

Sanders recently said that MASTOON will begin work on its new album in the fall. The effort will mark the group first release since 2017's "Emperor Of Sand", which won MASTODON a Grammy in the "Best Metal Performance" category for the song "Sultan's Curse".