Last Friday, Mastodon’s label sent out the first single from Once More Around the Sun out to radio. “High Road” is a catchy single with an extremely memorable chorus and a really interesting middle section/solo. A Kansas City radio station has posted a stream of the song online, so get a listen to it quickly before it gets taken down. In an interview with ArtistDirect, Bill Kelliher said that it was the song that he’s written that means the most to him:
There’s a song called “High Road”. I wrote the music. The lyrics were written by Brann Dailor. I think it’s going to be a single. It was a riff I wrote in my sober time. I was feeling really good about it. I actually wrote it on a James Hetfield model ESP. It’s the “Snake Bite” guitar. I was sitting in my hotel room in Luxembourg because we had a couple of days off there. It’s a very simple, easy, and heavy riff. I didn’t think it would catch on with anybody else, but Brann was like, “I hear some really cool vocals there!” It just blossomed into this huge six-minute song with cool leads. They’re not solos, but leads in the middle of the song I put together my song. It’s something I worked really hard on. It’s new and fresh. I’m excited for it to come out and have other people hear it and let me know what they think.
UPDATE: Mastodon has officially released the song, which can now be heard in the player below.
Check out our interview with Brann Dailor, where he spoke about Once More Around the Sun and the band’s upcoming tour with Gojira and Kvelertak.
