MASTODON Guitarist Says BRENT HINDS Is 'A Delicate Artist'

Christopher Porter of Washington Post Express recently conducted an interview with MASTODON guitarist Bill Kelliher. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Washington Post Express: "Crack the Skye" came out in so many iterations: CD, CD plus DVD, single LP, double audiophile LP, digital and a really awesome mail-order only CD/DVD box set with a kind of worm-hole accordion thingy in the middle. Are the multiple formats integral extensions of the band's art and expression?

Kelliher: It's all about packaging, especially these days when it's a recession and it's tough to sell CDs and records to a public that is so online and [hooked on] iTunes, and there's so many bands out there. It's a tough, competitive market. With this record, we have so much artwork that's beautiful and amazing and heartfelt that we wanted to put it out there as much as we can in every facet available. Basically, [artist Paul Romano is] part of the band, from day one. We start sending him ideas and keep him in the loop from the early demos — all the lyrics, what the concept is, everything. ... And he really digs deep when he's investigating what we're talking about. ... He brings it all together in a deep, meaningful way by really doing his homework on all the subject matter that we're bring to the table with the album. He has to make a specific piece of art for each song. Every song is meaningful so it has to have a really deep piece of art to go along with it. The tunnel book came into play when Warner Bros. showed us some ideas and we said, "Wow, that looks really cool. We can incorporate all the elements into one thing and it's a three-dimensional experience." ... Paul had sent it back and forth to us, and Warner Bros. put it all together and gave us mock-ups that didn't quite look right. If you're going to go through all the trouble of doing it, it's gotta be done right; it has to look fucking amazing. And finally we got it right and I think it looks really cool. It's the most elaborate packaging we've ever done. It was a limited run to 5,000 and it sold out immediately.

Washington Post Express: Most of the songs on "Crack the Skye" are by Brent [Hinds; guitar/vocals] and Brann [Dailor; drums]. When will a Bill-oriented MASTODON album surface?

Kelliher: I have ideas and stuff, but it hasn't been my turn to write. I'm thinking about the next record, trying to get ahead of everybody. Usually Brann has some grandiose scheme and ideas behind it right away, and I'm like, "Whoa! OK, if you have it all packaged up and ready to go already." I help and I talk about ideas, but I gave up singing. I sing live; I'll do screaming and more of a Dave Edwardson kind of thing from NEUROSIS. But being the frontman and singing, you kind of take on the responsibility of everyone thinking you're the leader and they want to talk to you. But I kind of like laying back and holding down the riffs of the songs and just concentrating on playing while the other guys are trying to sing and perform.

Washington Post Express: With all of MASTODON's members able to contribute to songwriting, do you guys sometimes overwrite? And how did working with producer Brendan O'Brien focus the band?

Kelliher: Hiring a person like Brendan to come — he was amazing. Without compromising anyone's feelings he said, "I'm going to be brutal about your music — that's what you're hiring me for. I'm going to tell if you if that part doesn't totally rock, I'm going to tell you to take it out and I hope you're not going to cry about it." And we said, "No, no, it's cool; we want your input." For "Ghost of Karolia", me and Brann especially had gone down to our practice space and rearranged the song a million times. ... We got kind of frustrated. The song was great, all the riffs were there, but we couldn't quite get it where it was blowing us away. And Brendan came in and he was like, "Change this part, throw that part away ... it's extra fluff." And we tried it that way and all the sudden were super-happy with it. ["The Last Baron"] was like eight or nine riffs just in a row, and we were like, "This isn't a song. It's just a bunch of riffs — but they all go together." So, we had to figure out which riff would be the main focus of the song ... and we fooled around with it enough until where we thought it sounded great. [The part with the clipped notes soaked in heavy delay] I call that the MARS VOLTA part. It's something we've never before. It's really spacey and there's a special energy that the song has. That was the first riff of the song, too. We didn't really know where to go from that, so we just anchored the other parts around it. And when we played ["The Last Baron"] for Brendan live, he was like, "That song, I'm not even going to touch. I don't even know what to make of it." I think we confused him. He was like, "Whoa, that's totally you guys. There's no way of chopping that song down to make it a three-and-a-half-minute single. Just leave it the way it is — it's fine, it's perfect. I have nothing to say about it at all. Just fucking go for it."

Washington Post Express: After Brent was punched in Sept. 2007 and was hospitalized with severe injuries, it made the band retrench and become more committed to one another. Brann even wrote about Brent's ordeal on "Crack the Skye". But then Brent goes and gets into another fight in Sept. 2008, and while King Khan got the worst of it, it was surprising that Brent would put himself in that situation again.

Kelliher: That's just who he is. I dunno. He's got ... he' just that kind of guy — really on edge a lot. I dunno if that's because of the accident or what, but those kinds of things just seem to follow him around; he can't seem to get out of it. Somebody saying the wrong thing to him. He's a delicate artist, I guess. [Laughs]

Read the entire interview from Washington Post Express.