nicole_powers

Mastodon has had a tough couple of years. First, singer / guitarist Brent Hinds suffered a severe brain hemorrhage, following a backstage incident at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards that reportedly involved System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian. Then, in fall of 2008, guitarist Bill Kelliher was hospitalized just days into a European tour with Slayer -- forcing the band, who formed nine years ago in Atlanta, to play as a three-piece.

But it hasn't been all drama. In between the two incidents, Mastodon recorded what has got to be their most elaborate album yet, Crack the Skye (reportedly named after drummer Brann Dailor's sister, Skye, who committed suicide at age 14). An elaborate semi-concept album about Czarist Russia, astral travel, wormholes and Rasputin, Crack the Skye features a song, "The Czar," split into four movements. Such conceptual indulgences aren't unique to Mastodon, but unlike others of their ilk that are for the most part limited to a specific niche, Mastodon succeeds in all quarters of the music market -- able to play the Pitchfork Festival then go on tour with Metallica.

SuicideGirls spoke with bassist / vocalist Troy Sanders as he was driving his truck around Atlanta on what he describes as the "first day of Georgia summer."

Joshua Glazer: How long have you been home for?

Troy Sanders: We came home December 9th from the Unholy Alliances Tour supporting Slayer. We were home January, February, March -- it's been three months, three glorious months.

JG: That's a nice long break for you guys.

TS: It is. Today is the 10th and we leave a month from today, April 10th, and we're going to be gone for, basically, the bulk of the next 12 to 15 months.

JG: Does it get harder to do as the years pass? Is there more desire to be at home?

TS: It's a perfect yin/yang man. It's like, we're not working or generating income unless we're on the road on tour. We enjoy it, we need to do it, and we love to do it. But, I think it's finding the fine line of the five week tour, two weeks at home, six week tour, two weeks at home, four week tour, two weeks at home -- you know, creating that balance. Because it's very easy to become disconnected with your home life when you're living the rock & roll lifestyle for forty days straight.

JG: You guys are in a good position. There's a history of metal bands, and bands that have a similar following to Mastodon, being able to do this for decades while making some sort of income.

TS: I hope so. You know, we've never had any expectations since we got together a little over nine years ago. Everything has built to this point very, very slowly and gradually and in a very positive manner.

At the same time, a lot of our heroes, you know The Melvins, Neurosis, Metallica, Slayer, these guys have all been together for 20 to 30-something years and are still very much a solid family unit, traveling the world, and still thrilled to travel the world and make music with their friends for a living. So, if that pans out for us in that degree, then that'd be awesome, that'd be amazing. But, that's kind of hard...that's something I don't even want to predict.

JG: You don't wanna jinx it.

TS: Yeah and I feel that as long as I'm alive and have motor skills, and I think I speak for all four of us, that we'll all be playing music, in one form or another, forever. I feel that's a safe thing to say. As long as Mastodon maintains its integrity and our brotherhood, then, I don't see it going anywhere.

JG: Right. You guys have had kind of a scary situation in the past year.

TS: We had a couple of em, yeah.

JG: Has that changed your outlook and your commitment to the band?

TS: I think, you know the clich, that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? In the Mastodon world, that's happened twice now over the past two years, and it's been a really true and effective term. We're over nine years old in the band now and we're a more tight-knit unit now than ever before. We're able to channel negatives into positive and therapeutic results and I think that's something very wonderful to achieve and overcome.

It's very easy to sit back and be super negative and just go on a downward spiral when something horrible hits you personally or band-wise or anything. But we've been able to channel these negatives into a positive and it's been amazing. That's one of the reasons I'm so proud of my dudes.

[talks with someone else] Hello. Thank you very much.

[back on the phone] Just got a box. FedEx just came around. We had a 12-inch picture disc released today and I just got my copy.

JG: For "Divinations"?

TS: Yeah, I was talking to our management last night and I was like, "Yeah, I was told that Hot Topic just got these exclusive 12-inch picture discs." I'm a big fan of vinyl and even a bigger fan of picture discs. My office here at home is lined with all my favorite picture discs - Frank Zappa, Hendrix, Metallica, Maiden -- so, my office collection is about to get a little bigger.

JG: Is this the first picture disc you guys have done?

TS: No, the Leviathan record was pressed on picture disc and that was really beautiful. We did a "Wolf is Loose" 12-inch single picture disc off the Blood Mountain record and we've done two 7-inch vinyl picture discs. So, I guess this will be the 5th picture disc, the third 12-inch, but, the 5th overall.

JG: I wanna talk about the art here a little bit. I'm totally into the art on the new record. Can you tell me a bit about who did it and what the idea was? Obviously, it's got this old Russian thing but it also kind of looks like Tron.

TS: We worked with artist Paul Romano, who's worked on all five of our records. He not only knows us well as individuals, but he also gets our music and understands our visions when we share them with him. So, for this record, months ago, we basically told him the outline, let him hear all of our rough demos so he can get an idea of the music, sent him all of our lyrics, and kind of told him the stories and imageries we felt behind each song and the story over all and he would just say, "Got it!" We can just toss out ideas to him, like, "Ok, time travel. Too close to the sun. Rip through a wormhole. Tsarist Russia. Atlas bears," and he's just like, "Ok...ok, ok." Couple of weeks later we start to see sketches and we'll say, "Ok, this particular one is great. Maybe this one we can add so and so," back and forth collaboration until the end result is totally done. So, Paul Romano has been with us since day one and he did all the art for this record as well.

But, as far as the cover goes, basically they're two spirit guides from a group called "Khlysty," that is a Russian Orthodox sect from the early 1900's that Rasputin was rumored to be a part of. They believe that, while on earth, you sin as much as possible to tap in and connect with the Holy Spirit. It's a very interesting and bizarre concept.

You know Rasputin was a drinker and womanizer, and had these god-like powers that eventually led him to befriend the Tsarina and heal the Tsarina's son of hemophilia, which ultimately led to his assassination. This whole story was fascinating to us. The green orb, that's the spirit orb, and through a divination the spirit realm places the boy's spirit in Rasputin's body. That's what that is representing. This boy is ripped through a hole in a wormhole, that's how he becomes outer space. He is experiencing astral-travel. The center of the record, that's representing the wormhole. The star formation of clouds going into the wormhole, that's representing the five elements. At the bottom there, representing the strength of Russia, that's an Atlas bear. The background deals with time travel, the euphoria, the psychedelia that can come along with these experiences.

The inside of the record, we've got, representing the first song "Oblivion," we have an animated sun. The start of our story is when this paraplegic boy wants to experience more of the world and he cannot move so he has an out of body experience and he experiments with astral travel. He ascends through the atmosphere, flies too close to the sun. The sun burns off his gold umbilical chord, which is keeping him connected to the material world. After the sun burns off his umbilical chord, he is now floating in space and he's lost in oblivion.

From there, he gets ripped through a wormhole and is shot out into the spirit realm. Then the second track, "Divinations," is when the spirit realm decides to help the boy return to his body because he's not dead and he's just, merely, lost from space travel. They place him in this group of divination of being held by the Khlysty's in early 1900's Siberian Russia.

JG: I assume you don't have it in your hand, you're remembering all this.

TS: Yeah, it comes out two weeks from today, which is exciting. I imagine we'll be getting our copies...they went to press like a month ago. We'll be getting our final copies any day now. So, I've just seen the art that's been sent over to approve. I haven't physically held it.

There's a lot more shit going on in there too man. That's a start.

JG: Sounds like it takes you more time to go through the art then listen to the record.

TS: Oh yeah man. We turned our record into the label in September and it's not gonna see light until the end of March, so, that's like a six month wait. We went back and forth and created a special edition CD, a standard CD. We created gatefold vinyl, special edition packaging vinyl. We also created a tunnel book that comes with the special edition packaging of the CD itself. It took us a long time to create that.

So, basically, the collaboration of artwork and the time it takes to create it and process it and print it is why the record is coming out in March. Which doesn't matter to us, because we want the art to be correct -- once it hits the shelves, it's out forever. So, we'd rather wait a little longer and have it done right, instead of rushing it and wishing we could go back and change some things.

It's all good. I just can't wait till I get to hold it. I just want to touch and feel. I want that tangible product in my hand.

JG: Which is rarer and rarer these days. Is it hard getting labels to do this kind of elaborate packaging?

TS: Well, the art of the album is very important to us and we put a lot of time and energy into everything; not only our songs, but our lyrics and our arrangements of songs, our artwork, our packaging, our videos. We don't like to slap things together. We spend a lot of energy and take a lot of pride in the whole package. You know the whole art of the album, it's very much alive in Mastodon's world.

JG: Can you think of a record maybe recently, or going back to when you were just a music fan, that you first were attracted to because of the art? Even before you knew the band or before you knew the music.

TS: Well, all four of us growing up were just fascinated and we would just immerse ourselves, hopping on the 12-inch record, checking out the front and backside artwork, reading the lyrics, and just trying to absorb everything that the album had to offer. We grew up in that era and that's what we don't want to lose touch with. Not only is the art of the album important to us, but we're also trying to keep that alive, keep a bit of that alive in this world.

But, uh, good question. Any Pink Floyd album I was blown away by, any Iron Maiden records. I don't know man, probably half of the records in my collection made me feel that way.

JG: You guys have a really diverse audience, in that you go on tour with Slayer, in Europe, and then to All Tomorrow's Parties. Do you see the difference when you're out there doing the different shows?

TS: Yeah, I think we've always aspired to be a multi-dimensional type band. I think because of the chemistry the four of us have brought together, the influences that we have, from bluegrass to jazz to prog-rock to heavy metal to punk and everything under the sun, is subtly in our souls and therefore it's gonna come out in some form or fashion with our music. I think that collectively as a unit, we can do a tour with Queens of the Stone Age and we go on tour with Slayer, and then, we go on tour with a rock band like Clutch, and then, we go on tour with a crazy fuckin' awesome band like Converge, and then, we'll go over and do a week with The Melvins, and then, this summer we're gonna go do two months with Metallica.

We just appreciate the diversity. We've exhausted ourselves on heavy metal tours. We've done seven tours with Slayer, and they've been wonderful, but, we've kind of exhausted ourselves on that. So, it's refreshing and nice to be able to go out and do shows with the Foo Fighters...just not remaining like a one-dimensional band. We're very fortunate that that's kind of worked out for us, but we also realize that it's very important to us. Last year we did a six-week tour with Against Me and that was very different for us. That brought together two different worlds, but, that was refreshing to do.

JG: Is it at all daunting to be going out with such a huge band like Metallica?

TS: Yes, it's amazing. We did two weeks with them across Europe in summer of '07 and then when we got this phone call a couple of months ago for these two months across Europe and two shows in Japan, this summer, it was just like...it's just so cool and it's kind of hard to compute properly. It just sounds like another dream world. But, that will become a reality when we join them on June 14th, in Helsinki.

JG: Do you watch the band play when you guys are on tour?

TS: Oh yeah! In '06 we did 40-something shows across Europe with Tool. I watched them every fucking night. This past tour with Slayer, this is our seventh run with them. I watched some or all of their show every single night. We did six weeks with Maiden two years ago, which was a dream come true. I watched them, of course, every single night. You know, bands like that, that just perform, that do what they do better than anyone else, it's just so fascinating to just witness it over and over. It doesn't get old to me.

JG: If you guys had to chose at this point, who would you want to tour with that you haven't already?

TS: We need to do some shows with Priest. We were able to do that Maiden thing. Were able to do the Black Sabbath. We were able to do Tool, Slayer, Metallica. Of the big hitters, we need to do Priest or some kind of festival where we can cross paths with AC/DC, at least once.

JG: You guys are gonna be doing some shows where you play the entire album.

TS: Yeah, we plan on playing our record in its entirety.

JG: What inspired that?

TS: When we listened back to this record a few months back, it just had the most cohesive flow musically than any of our previous records. We just feel that the entirety of this record, the over all record, is stronger than the sum of its parts. We feel like this hits hardest and is most effective when it's listened to in its entirety, so, we want to perform it that way.

Before, we've talked about doing a record from start to finish and we felt that this was the one we need to perform from start to finish. It just was very apparent to us.

JG: I never understood why most bands don't do it. A lot of times you'll see a band, and it feels weird not hearing the songs in the order you know. Why not just do them in the order?

This record was produced by Brendan O'Brien, who you met through Max Weinberg of the E Street Band. How do you guys know Max?

TS: We know Max. His son, Jay Weinberg, is a great drummer and a super music fan and he's been coming to every show we've played in New York for the past, like, five years. Max and Jay would come to all the shows together. So, we met Max several times at our shows in New York and then we played the Conan O'Brien show a couple of years ago and Max is Conan's drummer. So, we hung our for the weekend with him there and then we were home last year and earlier this year and Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band came through Atlanta. We went to the show and we went back to say hello to Max and had a brief meeting with Bruce and our drummer, Brann, asked Bruce, "Hey man, how do you feel about working with Brendan O'Brien?" cause he had done his previous two records. "Any pointers or any thoughts?" Bruce turned to Brann and said, "Brendan is the only man that I trust with my music right now."

So, that was pretty much the highest recommendation we could have received and we thought, well, "Hey, you're The Boss." So, that's what we're doing. We got the O.K. right from Bruce's mouth, so...

JG: I was just reading that there might actually be a situation, cause Bruce wants to stay on tour this year, and Max has commitments with Conan and they're trying to figure if they're gonna have to go out with another drummer. Which...it's hard to imagine it.

TS: Yeah, we'll see what happens. But, I understand. The Conan gig is a big time show and a huge commitment. So, I don't know how that's going to pan out.

JG: I was looking at "Divinations" on the Amazon page, and in the "People Who Bought This Also Bought" section it listed a couple of your records, a couple of rock metal records, and John Coltrane's My Favorite Things album.

TS: Awesome. We love classical music, we love jazz. If possible, we like to have our brand of heavy rock have our classical music-type movements within them. It's just beautiful songwriting, so, if we can tap into anything relative to that jazz time frame, or the 1700's classical music that was being created...Austria just blossomed a shit ton of amazing classical composers. If we can incorporate any type of style from them into our music, all the better. Only makes music more interesting, more beautiful, flowing, and these movements just have this enormous amount of life and breadth into them.

JG: People tend to not make the connection between the type of music you guys play and jazz or classical. When in reality, the amount of practice you have to do, and really learning your instrument...Do still practice?

TS: Yeah, I mean I've always just jammed with dudes in my band. That's all I've really ever done. We get together four or five days a week. Like, for the next four weeks we rehearse four or five days a week, between four or five days a week, getting ready for this tour, two hours a day or so. You gotta keep up with your chops.