There are going to be a lot of good records coming out next year, but one of the ones we’re looking most forward to is Mastodon’s sixth album. And now we know who’s going to be producing it. In an interview with Rolling Stone, drummer Brann Dailor reveals that the band is set to head into the studio with Nick Raskulinecz in a few weeks. “He’s done a bunch of our friends’ records taht sound great,” he told the magazine. I’m a fan of all the Deftones records he’s done, all the Alice in Chains stuff, and we worked with Queens of the Stone Age on Songs for the Deaf.”

So far, the band have written about 18 or 19 songs, which they’re working on trimming down. There’s nothing really specific about what the new stuff will sound like. Last year, Brent Hinds told reporters he was writing “spooky sounding, Radiohead-ish” music, but that was before progress on the album got delayed by the band heading on the road for this Summer’s Mayhem Fest. Dailor had this to say about the album.

“It’s gonna be massive and insane, lots of epic greatness,” he says. “There will be lots of huge riffs and new directions. It’s real weird, real math-y, real straightforward. It’s up, down and all around.” He laughs. “It’s a culmination of everything for the band. The snowball keeps rolling and collecting snow.”

And while there’s probably not going to be any of his direct influence, the article says that Stevie Wonder was a huge influence on getting the band into the mindspace to perform before shows. Dailor says that a 1972 live Wonder show and a performance from a 1975 put them in a “spritual realm” of going on stage. But the band sounds excited about the new album, with Dailor ending the interview by saying “We’re ready to lay them shits down. We’re ready to rock.”

The band’s second live album, Mastodon Live at Brixton, will be out on December 10.