keith

You pick up the new album Leviathan by Atlanta, Georgia's Mastodon, and you notice a couple of things: here you've got cover art straight from the Molly Hatchet playbook, a concept album about Moby Dick, and nary a curse word or satanic invocation in sight. Don't expect Leviathan to be heavy? Well, you'd be wrong, motherfucker, because Mastodon just might be the heaviest band on the planet right now, and Leviathan is a masterpiece of artful, thoughtful, devastating metal. Every member of Mastodon has chops to spare, but the drums, courtesy of former Today Is the Day and Lethargy member Brann Dailor, particularly stand out. Dailor plays a fill heavy, prog and jazz-influenced style that gives Mastodon's work an epic scale. They're only on their second album, but at age thirty, this guy is already destined to go down as one of the greats:

Keith Daniels: You just had your 30th birthday last week. How'd you celebrate?

Brann Dailor: I went to the Cayman Islands. Went swimming, ate seafood, hung out on the beach. It was brilliant. I got away from the band for a minute. My wife actually surprised me with it.

KD: It seems like every other Mastodon interview I read is with you. How did you get to be the spokesman of the band?

BD: I don't know. I think I was the most accessible. I had the most time on my hands, and where I worked I had a phone [Laughs] that I could use. That's pretty much why.

KD: I've read that your favorite records are things like Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders From Mars, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, and some of the early Stevie Wonder records. How does a guy who digs all that stuff end up in a metal band?

BD: I was raised on metal, too, those are my favorite records. I like playing metal, and I like listening to it, too. Don't get me wrong, I'm not only listening to those records. Musically, though, those are the records that I think will last, for me, my whole life. I'll always listen to those records, but I like playing metal. I like the intensity of it.

KD: But you're kind of the prog fan in the band. All those records [listed above] had a concept, or a theme. Sometimes I think that an album having a theme makes it easier to get into, or gives you an entry point.

BD: Yeah, definitely.

KD: You grew up in Rochester, New York. Did living right there on Lake Ontario give you a fascination for the water?

BD: I'm not sure. Maybe subconsciously, but not consciously, no. I spent a lot of time there, on the water.

KD: One of the things I like about the new record is that, instead of trying to tell a narrative story, like Tommy or something, you go for more of a poetic approach, using the images from the book and from the ocean. Was that something that you thought about, or did it just turn out that way?

BD: Well, we didn't want to just cover the book verbatim, so I think we just put the overall theme in everybody's head, and that we were going to use the artwork for it. Then, from there, I think the way that Troy and Brent write lyrics is more poetic anyway -- so that's just the way it's going to be for us, lyrically. I don't think we'll ever sit down and write a complete, cohesive story from start to finish. I don't think we're really interested in doing that. We're more interested in the lyrics fitting more the mood of the music, like the words actually coming from the feeling the music invokes.

KD: It seems like when you read about the classic concept albums, there always seems to have been a song that wasn't really written with the concept in mind, but just happened to have a coincidental tie-in with it. Were there any songs like that on this record?

BD: I don't think so. We wrote everything within a month and a half, and a few months before that is when we talked about the concept. Before we went into the writing process, we had the idea in the back of everybody's head.

KD: I had read that you felt like you were in a hurry when you wrote and recorded this record. Do you think you would have done anything differently with more time?

BD: No, but who's to say? That's the time that we were given. If we weren't happy with the material, then we wouldn't have recorded it; we wouldn't have put the album out. We would have just been like, "forget it." That's where it was at. We were just like, "If we can do it, we can do it. If we can't, we can't. We'll just call Relapse and say 'We need more time. A month and half's just not enough, sorry.'" But we got together, put our stuff together, and when we got into our practice space it just all kind of fell together nicely, and we were happy with it. We were like, "Okay, we have a strong fifty minutes worth of music. Cool. We can lay this down."

KD: I've noticed that most of the songs on the album are like three, three-and-a-half, minutes long. Did the time frame have anything to do with that?

BD: I don't think so. I think that's more of our collective ADD, you know? The songs were a lot longer to begin with, and we'd just be like, "This is dragging, and this is too long." As we're playing it we're just clipping and cutting, you know? We're kind of jumpy, and we want to get to the next riff. I think that has a lot to do with [it]. The songs are gonna be as long as they're gonna be, it's just our collective feeling when we're writing it, how long it's going to be. We don't say to ourselves, "It has to be three minutes long. It has to be four minutes long." Like the second to last song, "Hearts Alive", it's like fourteen minutes long, and it just ended up being that long because that's how long it is. [Laughs]

KD: The biggest change between this album and Remission is on the vocals. There are some songs [on this record] where you're actually kind of singing. When you go and read the internet message boards, there's always some guy that's like, "This sucks!" Did you worry about what the fans would think about it, and why do you think metal fans in particular are so obsessive about their favorite bands not evolving or changing anything?

BD: I don't know. I think kids are kids, and you're not ever going to be able to please everybody. As soon as you put out a second album, there's somebody out there who's going to say "I like the first album better." or "I like the demo better." or "I like the practice tape that I heard better." [Laughs] You know what I mean?

KD: [Laughs] "I saw them in some basement somewhere..."

BD: "...and they were way better bla bla bla." We've all been there. We've all met those kids. I'm too old for that shit. [Laughs] They're kids. They fell in love with Remission and they don't ever want it to change. They want it to be like that album forever. I understand that. I understand kids that feel that way, but we could never be stagnant. If we were to put out Remission, Part Two I would have to quit the band. We would have to break up, because I'm not going to be in a project that's just going to sit there and do the same thing over and over again. There are bands that have done that and prevailed -- look at the Ramones, they found a niche, found exactly what they wanted to do, and they did it over and over again and it was amazing, but I want to be in the kind of band that opens doors for ourselves to just do whatever the Hell we want, and have the kind of fan-base that expects us to be different every time. That has come over time. It's going to take a few records for our collective fans to realize that. We have to weed out a lot of thorns doing that. People will fall out of love with us, and they'll ditch us after this record, but that's okay, as long as we're comfortable with what we're doing. If we know that we're playing what we love to play, then that's as far as I can go.

KD: You mentioned the cover art, earlier. Paul Romano, who did the cover art for Remission and this one. It might be silly to talk about, but it's gorgeous. My wife picked it up and was like, "Ooh, pretty." Do you think that helps as far as curbing downloading, that people go pick this up and feel like they've purchased a piece of art?

BD: I guess so. That's kind of the idea, sort of. Again, I'm not really thinking too much about other people as [much as] I'm thinking about our band, and we have all this music that we're going to put on a CD, and that we can have really awesome artwork, that we have good ideas for artwork, and that we have a cool friend who's a sick painter who can paint anything we want him to paint. It's more like us holding it in our hands and going "Wow! That's awesome! This is beautiful." It is conscious. That's what we want, we want to tie it all in together, but if it helps people to go out and grab it because it's got cool artwork, then that's cool, too. The scary thing is that, eventually, that's all going to go away, and people are just going to download music. Then you're going to have present it in a different way. You're going to have find a new way to have artwork. Artwork's always been a huge part of music, for me. I mean, I bought Iron Maiden's Piece of Mind when I was seven years old because it had a monster on it.

KD: You mentioned in one interview that the whale on the cover is only a small part of a much larger painting. The exact quote was "It's a whole new world of Mastodon art." Some of the great bands, like you mentioned, Iron Maiden, or Pink Floyd, have this whole iconography, where you see a piece of art and you say "That's Iron Maiden." Would you like to see something like that with Mastodon?

BD: Yeah, absolutely. We're all big art fans. Art, music, that's our life. If we can tie the artwork into the music, it's that much better -- a visual with the sound, something that matches it, and intertwines together. That's important, I think.

KD: There was a rumor that you were in negotiations to support Iron Maiden on their summer tour in Europe.

BD: Yeah, we're doing that.

KD: Awesome. And you're also doing Ozzfest.

BD: Yeah.

KD: In an interview back in August, you sounded a little hesitant to do it. What made you change your mind?

BD: It's not that I was hesitant. It's just that I didn't want us to put ourselves in a position where we were going to owe a record company like Relapse a hundred thousand dollars, or put ourselves in a position where we had to work, had to tour, to pay off this debt. I want to play music because I love it, not 'cause I owe money. You're always going to owe some kind of money to record companies and stuff, I just think that there's other ways to get there besides paying Ozzfest a large sum of money like that, so we were able to be on it. That [interview] was last year, and I said, "Let's wait a year. Let Leviathan come out, and if there's a possibility that we can be on Ozzfest without having to pay, then that would be great, but if we have to pay, then we don't want to do it."

KD: I haven't been able to find the video for "Blood & Thunder" online...

BD: It's not out yet.

KD: ...but you have finished it. What can you tell me about it?

BD: It's crazy. I don't know if you've seen the pictures, or anything, but it's really awesome. This guy named Jonathan Rej, from Atlanta, did it. We're dressed like Shriners, with fezzes on, and there's like fifty or seventy clowns, in this bar called The Star Bar, which is a local bar in Atlanta. There are just clowns in a mosh pit, and I guess the premise is that we're playing in kind of a carnival. There's clowns, a bearded lady, and the Elephant Man is drinking at the bar. There's a pinhead and a voodoo medicine man, conjoined twins, and the alligator lady. Carnies, clowns, it's crazy, but it's really bright and colorful and entertaining. If you took the music away I think that visually it stands on its own as a cool piece of entertainment.

KD: That's cool that you went in an unexpected direction. I guess the obvious choice would have been to do a Moby Dick inspired video.

BD: Well, this clown idea was kind of sitting around on the table for a while, and the people we were trying to pitch it to weren't really seeing it, but we were seeing it. We were really excited about doing it, if only someone would let us. Finally, we were able to put the spin on it that whoever needed it to be spun needed, it finally worked, and they let us shoot the video. I think it's perfect for the song, too. It's really beautifully shot, too. It really looks awesome.

KD: One interesting thing I read about you is that you used to do an Elvis Costello cover band. Do you still do that? Was Pete Thomas, the drummer for the Attractions, an inspiration?

BD: Yeah, absolutely. He's an amazing drummer; one of my favorites, actually. I don't do it [anymore] because I'm never home, and even when I am home I don't play that much. We're home for like a week at a time. I only did a few times. When I get home and we try to plan it, "Let's do it this day", it's fun. That guy was a great drummer, and it's kind of different for me to do that. There's cool reggae beats that he does, and straight up rock.

KD: One of the things I like about your style is that sometimes it seems as if the front section of the band is holding the beat down while you're jamming.

BD: [Laughs] Yeah, I know.

KD: I was wondering where that came from.

BD: I don't know. I've got a lot of favorite drummers that I've stolen from. Phil Collins [Genesis], Bill Bruford [King Crimson, Yes], Elvin Jones [John Coltrane Quartet, Tony Williams [Miles Davis Quintet], Keith Moon [The Who], John Bonham [Led Zeppelin], Ginger Baker [Cream], blah blah blah.

KD: [Chuckles]

BD: All the greats, basically. I have all the obvious influences that one might think.
Neil Pert [Rush], Mikkey Dee from King Diamond, Dave Lombardo [Slayer], of course.

KD: Well, they're famous because they're the best, y'know?

BD: Yeah, I know! [Laugh] I guess the only surprise, for some people, people that have never heard Genesis before the exit of Peter Gabriel, is Phil Collins. People just kind of chuckle when they hear me say that, thinking that I'm joking, being ironic or something. I'm totally not! He seriously was... I mean, they go "Sue Sue Sulio" [Laughs], but [that] being said, even some of the Genesis stuff that came out that was super poppy had some killer drums on it, if you listen to it. I know that might be blasphemy saying that, but it had the best drums in pop music, that's for sure.

KD: The last song, "Joseph Merrick", is a sequel in theme from "Elephant Man" on Remission. What is it about him that you guys find interesting?

BD: We've just always been interested in Joseph, and his life. He's just a constant reminder of how good life is, just to be grateful for what you got. He was, and he had, shit, and that's also what he got.

KD: You've probably been asked this before, but the notion of Moby Dick brings to mind Ahab and his obsession with the White Whale. What's your obsession? What's your White Whale?

BD: I don't know. That's the thing. I guess we're just out here. [Laughs] I'm out here just for the experience. It's every kid's fantasy to be the biggest band in the world, I guess, but I just really like playing drums, and I really like playing drums for lots of people. I like doing the biggest, best things. I like to meet my heroes. I'd like to steal as many years as possible.

KD: Have you started to think about what you're going to do next, as far as your next album?

BD: I don't know yet. We'll see what happens. We've got a lot of ideas, but we'll see what comes out. I'm not sure about concepts, yet, been writing a lot of stuff down, but nothing's really smacked us in the face yet.

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