MASTODON's TROY SANDERS is Looking Forward To Playing This Weekend's HEAVY MTL Festival

July 22, 2010

Dave Jaffer of Hour.ca recently conducted an interview with bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders of Atlanta progressive metallers MASTODON. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On how MASTODON created its 2009 masterpiece, "Crack the Skye", which epitomizes the notion of music as a journey:

"The most important part of our themed albums, our concept records, is it puts our entire band on the same page while writing the storyline or the lyrics. Once we create a skeleton of a story and the whole band agrees on it, we're all on the same page thematically and it enables any member of the band to throw in their ideas, their thoughts, their lines, their entire [songs].

"Our 'Remission' record was loosely based on fire, our 'Leviathan' record dealt with water, 'Blood Mountain' dealt with elements on Earth and 'Crack the Skye' was the last chapter. We can now close the book of elements as 'Crack the Skye''s main theme dealt with ether, the dark matter that dominates the universe, and enabled us to ascend to the atmosphere and immerse ourselves in our wonder and amazement of outer space."

On MASTODON's performance at this coming weekend's Heavy MTL festival in Montreal, Quebec, Canada — the band's only summer appearance anywhere:

"We had such a blast at the first one [in 2008] we couldn't say no to this. Not only was our one Heavy MTL experience incredible, but Montreal has completely embraced us for the past 10 years that we've been coming up there, and I can honestly say that the environment and the overall appreciation we receive from people in Montreal easily places [it] in the top three destinations in North America that we've ever experienced. [Despite] the hassle we constantly receive at the border, it's always worth it to get in and play that show. Just to hit Montreal makes our border nightmare completely worth it."

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).