It seems like a no-brainer that we’ll be getting a new album from Mastodon in 2017. Guitarist Bill Kelliher has spoken about the album, which would be their seventh, saying that he’s hopeful for a release early next year. He recently went into more detail with GuitarMania before the band’s show in Vienna. It turns out that he’s written the majority of the album with drummer Brann Dailor.
I’ve already come up with eleven songs, which is probably about an hour’s worth of music — like, finished, start to end. It’ll change as everybody chimes in and takes the things I wrote and maybe changes them a little bit, or we might take parts out and write a new part.Honestly, I was very busy the past few months writing. ‘Cause I have a studio at home, so I can just sit down there and listen to a click track and record all my ideas that I’ve come up with on the road. ‘Cause I don’t have the time to write when I’m at home — I’m very busy at home with my family and my kids. I can’t just sit there and go like this [plays air guitar] all day. That’s what these days [on tour] are for. It’s seventy percent there. It just needs everyone to play on it.
It’s pretty interesting to hear about how the band writes, as Brent Hinds wrote the majority of Crack the Skye on acoustic guitar while recuperating from injuries he got while in a fight. He states in the interview that generally he and Brann will write “six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven songs, and then Brent and Troy… like Brent will write a few songs, and then we’ll all try to come together and make it make sense.” As far as what the next album will sound like as compared to Once More ‘Round the Sun:
It’s a little bit of the same as the last album, but I think it goes even deeper in certain areas — a couple of more psychedelic parts, a little more technical parts. There are a couple of new places we haven’t gone before. So it’s just kind of a continuation of the last record to me, but even deeper.”
The band is tentatively hitting the studio in October.
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