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Make You Stronger
hat which doesn’ t kill you will only make you stronger, goes the old maxim. But in the case of sludgeheavy prog-metal quartet Mastodon, mortality can occasionally offer a surprising new strength, as well. As in the recent honor bestowed upon the group by Dan Weiss, the executive producer of HBO’ s hit series Game of Thrones, who not only included its song“ White Walker” on the soundtrack, but actually invited the members to appear as feral Wildlings in Season Five last year, who were then – in one of the show’ s bloodiest battle-scene episodes ever – murdered, and resurrected as undead White Walkers themselves. That much stronger, and more wickedly determined than ever to breach that civilization’ s monolithic protective wall.
“ It was definitely a cool experience for everybody involved,” declares Mastodon bassist Troy Sanders, who was unable to attend the tapings in Northern Ireland.“ And whenever we play Belfast, Dan comes to our show, even though he’ s incredibly busy. But he just loves Mastodon, loves the band, and he’ s a really sweet guy, and he wears a Mastodon shirt all the time – I’ ve seen him in it on television shows. So it was just a really cool connection, and for Wildlings, I think our band fits in nicely.” Why didn’ t he accept Weiss’ remarkable offer?“ I guess it’ s all a hush-hush thing or whatever,” he starts to explain, then catches himself.“ Wait – are you talking about last year?” he gulps. That’ s right – the White Walkers are an army of zombies, still on their mission of conquest. Which means ….” Wellll …. I’ m not supposed to talk about it-- whoops!” he chuckles. Perhaps Game of Thrones fans will have to pause their DVRs once more to catch glimpses of cataract-eyed ex-
By Tom Lanham photos by Jimmy Hubbard
Wildlings Brann Dailor, Brent Hinds, and Bill Kelliher( already so bearded and burly that they couldn’ t have required that much makeup) marching en masse across a frozen wasteland this upcoming season. Given the cone of silence surrounding the program’ s future plotlines, Sanders has already said too much.
Then the Atlanta native begins talking about the reason he, personally, didn’ t jet to Belfast, even though his wife insisted he go. He had front-row tickets that particular day to see the latest Cirque Du Soleil performance with her and their two children, and witnessing such magical entertainment with his family, up close, meant much more to him at the time.“ So I’ ll take another sunset with my kids over an amazing opportunity like that any day,” he says, not intending to sound ungrateful.“ So sometimes great opportunities come my way that I take, sometimes great opportunities come my way that I pass on. And I’ m fortunate enough to have that be a problem – having a great opportunity that I can say no thank you to, and Game of Thrones is arguably the best show on TV.” He pauses.“ But you know, we just wrote a record on the idea of time, and what it means ….”
And therein hangs the real tale, revolving around not only mortality, but overcoming human frailty with indomitable will power and inner strength. As parables go, they don’ t come much darker than Emperor of Sand, Mastodon’ s new seventh studio effort, with said Emperor representing the Grim Reaper who – in thundering Track One – levies upon the unwitting protagonist a“ Sultan’ s Curse,” which haunts him through his travels / travails across a morally-ambiguous desert of“ Precious Stones,” a“ Steambreather,” an“ Ancient Kingdom,” eliciting the“ Why me?” questioning of“ Clandestiny,” the star-gazing of“ Andromeda”( featuring Brutal Truth’ s Kevin Sharp) and the threat of“ Scorpion Breath”( with Scott Kelly of Neurosis) before finally finding some sort of mystical South American peace in a closing“ Jaguar God.” The dirges were inspired by a subject far more serious than the group’ s usual heady dissertations – the unexpected diagnosis of cancer that hit a loved one of each band member over the past two years, starting with the brain cancer that slowly took the life of Kelliher’ s mother, while he watched, horrified and helpless as the disease swiftly progressed. Sanders is fairly private, and he doesn’ t like oversharing on social media. So he isn’ t revealing which person in his own family was affected. But the experience – both alone and collectively, as a group – was quite harrowing, and it could only find release in cathartic songwriting, with the bassist himself providing a good deal of the metaphorical lyrics.
Mastodon is no stranger to concept albums. Its second adventurous outing, Leviathan, was a reimagining of Melville’ s Moby Dick opus, before the band broke through to Grammy-nominated territory with 2006’ s brains-meets-brawn Blood Mountain, leading to a line of Vans skate shoes featuring the eldritch cover artwork, and more recently, its own special craft beers, including Mother Puncher from Denmark’ s Keller Brewery, Germany’ s The Hunter from Mars Brau, and a Crack the Skye run from Chicago’ s Three Floyds company.“ If you would have asked us a handful of years ago if there was a certain level of success we were shooting for, we would have said,‘ If we could have our own shoe and our own beer,’” Sanders says.“ And now we’ ve got five different beers, and we’ ve had multiple album-art images on shoes. So to us? We’ ve made it. We set the goals high, but we did it, damn it!”
Otherwise, the artist sighs, he’ s been rolling with the punches, thinking positive, and letting his droll sense of humor buoy his spirits in such grim circumstances. And he and his fellow members found solace in the studio, creating the fable of their Emperor of Sand, Or rather, letting the story imagine itself into existence.“ The four of us have been living these experiences deeply over the past two years,” he says.“ And that’ s what we were writing. When we showed up to band practice, we let that current of emotion flow through our fingers and into the instruments, and through the amps and onto the recording tape. That’ s how we build songs.”
That’ s what led to the record’ s most crucial track,“ Clandestiny,” he adds. For any cancer patient,“ You find this thing inside you and you say,‘ What’ s in me?,’ and then you go and get a cancer diagnosis. And you still wonder,‘ Why is this a part of my fate?’ So we wrote that song about the fact that it’ s part of your destiny, but it’ s been dwelling dormant inside of you, silent all your life, and only now it’ s arising. So you have to try to wrap your head around something like that, and that’ s affected all of us this year. We’ re kind of blown away by how four of our loved ones are dealing with this horrible thing called cancer – it’ s affecting lives and taking lives, and that was very brutally on our minds every single day we showed up for band practice. So that was going to come out naturally in the music.”
Kelliher’ s mother was something of a matron to the whole group, Sanders
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22 illinoisentertainer. com march 2017