“Going back to your question about what I feared most when parting ways with him,” says Bill Kelliher, softly, “it was that he’d pass away.
On August 20, 2025, that fear became reality. Incendiary Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds was killed in a motorcycle accident in Atlanta at the age of 51. It was a devastating punctuation mark to a 25-year creative partnership that had fractured just five months prior, with Brent acrimoniously quitting the band and taking his grievances to social media while the band remained silent.
In the recently released 35-minute documentary, The Mastodon In The Room, the surviving members addressed the messy reality of Brent’s departure and subsequent death with remarkable candour. But while that film looks backwards, sitting down with Hammer this afternoon, the conversation repeatedly drifts somewhere else entirely: forwards.
Spain is currently baking beneath a relentless, tarmac-melting heatwave, but backstage at Rock Imperium Festival, in Mastodon’s air-conditioned enclave, guitarist Bill is the very picture of chill.
“The tour has been going really, really well,” he says, leaning back. “Every single night is better than the last.”
Among all members of the band, the emotional baseline is identical. Drummer Brann Dailor is a blur of kinetic energy, plopping down on the couch with drumsticks in hand, hammering out a lightning-fast, spitfire rat-a-tat on his thigh, then nodding with approval; after a month of shows, this suffices for his readiness check.
“There’s a heatwave ripping through Europe and we’ve been following it closely, so it’s been pretty steamy,” he says. “But the shows have been awesome and it’s been a lot of fun.”
Grinning beneath his baseball cap, bassist Troy Sanders adds, “Usually people are getting grumpy by now. But the joy is real. We truly enjoy each and every show. It’s a real treat.”
Considering all that Mastodon have endured in the past 18 months, such boundless optimism sounds almost jarring. To understand how the band arrived here, we need to rewind.
Last year put the boot in as soon as it began. In February 2025, Brann lost his mother, Michele, after a lengthy period of ill-health. It was a tragic prelude to the tumult ahead.
Six weeks later, the other shoe dropped. In March, Brent quit Mastodon, severing a bond that had been buckling under progressive, heavy strain for years. As the band discuss in The Mastodon In The Room, the downward spiral had become impossible to ignore: missed cues, erratic onstage outbursts, and a widening social gulf driven by Brent’s escalating battles with alcohol.
For a long time, the remaining trio hesitated to act, holding onto memories of the early years when they were just four guys trying to make each other laugh in a cramped tour van. But by 2021, around the Hushed And Grim tour, the collective enthusiasm had withered.
The end, when it came, was abrupt. During a tense band meeting in their rehearsal space, as members discussed the impact of Brent’s behaviour, the guitarist rose up and stormed out, never to return. For Brann, it was an emotional haymaker after the loss of his mother.
“I was definitely struggling just being a person,” he explains. “Then the turmoil with Brent just made everything worse. I had this big, heavy grief cloak on, dragging my carcass around, and I wasn’t having fun.”
Fortunately, the raw material that would eventually emerge as the band’s latest album, Marrow Deep, had already taken shape. By the time Brent left the band, the skeletons of 23 songs had already been written – without Brent’s involvement.
“It had already been quite evident that Brent’s interest in participating was waning,” adds Troy. “We didn’t want to continually invite a dark cloud to come loom over us while we’re trying to be creative. We just kept doing it where the excitement and energy were at 100%.”
I was immediately shocked and saddened. But unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised.
Troy Sanders
Two days after announcing Brent’s exit, the band drafted YouTube guitar virtuoso Ben Eller to handle immediate touring commitments, bringing a welcome predictability back to an erratic live engine. But while Ben provided vital onstage stability, the permanent role required something beyond pure technical proficiency – it needed the creative friction of two wildly disparate guitar personalities.
“Ben’s style is a little too similar to Bill’s,” Brann explains. “It would be like having two Bills. The special thing about our band was that Brent’s playing was so wildly different.”
Enter Nick Johnston. A virtuoso within the progressive instrumental scene, he wasn’t a standard metal journeyman; he was the necessary creative counterweight.
“We wanted a yin-and-yang situation,” Brann says. “Somebody who could emote during solos and bring a different side of the coin. Nick approaches the instrument like nobody else I’ve ever heard.”
“Nick’s been wonderful,” says Bill. “He’s one of the nicest humans I’ve ever met. He brings things to the table that I’d never come up with, and vice versa.”
Nick arrived in May 2025, working alongside longtime touring keyboardist João Nogueira, whose atmospheric textures added a fresh dimension to the arrangements. Rather than merely mimicking the past, the two began reshaping the transitions and interludes. Together, Nick and João injected a sophisticated progressive flourish –a level of intricate, fluid musicianship that felt striking even for a band with Mastodon’s formidable technical pedigree.
Amazingly, after 25 years, Mastodon were expanding their sonic palette. But the ultimate test of this new five-piece was fast approaching. In August, just 10 days before they were scheduled to enter the studio to record the album, the news broke from Atlanta: Brent was gone.
Word of his fatal accident spread rapidly. A subsequent Atlanta Police investigation concluded Brent had been travelling at nearly 70mph – twice the legal speed limit – and that excessive speed was the decisive factor in the crash. For the surviving members, whatever resentment had built up during the public fallout of the split evaporated the moment the news broke.
“I was immediately shocked and saddened,” says Troy. “But unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised. I don’t mean that in any distasteful manner, whatsoever. I’ve done everything I could as a friend and as a bandmate over the years. I don’t know what else I could’ve done, so I’m kind of forced to just let go.”
“I wasn’t surprised that it happened, but I was shocked,” adds Bill. “I just didn’t think it was going to happen like that.”
The fact was that they began grieving Brent long before the crash. Reflecting this afternoon, there’s only a quiet sadness and a deep, genuine fondness.
“Whenever someone rides by on a loud motorcycle, I think of Brent first,” says Bill. “He was omnipresent in my life. Even though we didn’t always see eye-to-eye – more times than not we did – I cared about the guy. I always thought
he would outlive us all, because he had nine lives and got away with everything.”
“When Brent was in a good mood – his normal, happy
self, not hungover Brent – it was so much fun,” Brann adds. “We were the funniest people we knew. I miss that aspect of it: the camaraderie, the jokes, and the fun. And musically, he would just rip some solos – snatch them right out of the sky and make you cry. I miss all of that.”
Barely a week after his passing and still reeling from the news, Mastodon entered the studio. “It was difficult. It was dark. It was sad,” Troy says. “But it was also necessary.”
I had this big, heavy grief cloak on, dragging my carcass around, and I wasn’t having fun
Brann Dailor
Historically, Mastodon have processed personal tragedy through a cinematic filter of concept albums and mythology – Moby Dick, czars and villainous emperors – using grand metaphors to absorb the concussive force of real-world pain. On Marrow Deep, the masks are gone, the lyrics replaced by a stark, collective honesty, with the word ‘we’ frequently overtaking the insular ‘I’.
“It probably wasn’t intentional,” Troy says, considering the shift. “But that’s where we all were.”
Across towering tracks such as Your Ghost Again and Moth And Bone, grief and the wreckage of their fractured friendship with Brent are laid bare. When Troy roars, ‘Our faces hit the wall again… the wound is cutting deeper’ on the latter, there is no protective imagery left to hide behind. The nerve is fully exposed.
That starkness crystallises halfway through the album, on In The Ruins. Built around a long-gestating riff from Bill, the track took shape when co-producer Patrik Berger suggested slamming from its quietest moment straight into its most punishing movement.
“When Troy put his lyrics over the top, it shot to the top of everybody’s list,” reveals Brann. “He is pulling from his own experience there. He lost his home and all his possessions in a Florida hurricane. It’s something he’s very quiet about, but it was devastating.”
Conversely, A Vampire’s Demeanor offers a blast of straightforward metal built around a driving main riff written by Brann.
“Every time we played it in the rehearsal space, I just wanted to play it forever,” Brann says. “To me, that’s a festival song. I can already see a crowd jumping in unison at Download.”
The band’s newly unlocked chemistry really speaks for itself.
“If you want an example of the new dynamic, look at a song like Poisonous Weapons,” says Bill. “I threw a ‘riff grenade’ into the room to see what Nick and João would come up with. In the middle section, they turned my basic formula into this incredibly proggy space jam. It’s the same on The Three Fates – the placement of that part at the end of the song is a hint of what’s to come.”
That forward-looking outro anchors the album’s closing epic – a track that ultimately bridges the band’s raw new reality with their signature move. Because for all of Marrow Deep’s unvarnished realism, they couldn’t completely resist the gravity of ancient myth.
“I did squeak in some mythology anyway,” Brann laughs, tracking the origin of the song back to the Greek Moirai – mythological sisters who spin, measure, and inevitably snip the thread of human life. “I look at Brent and my mom as being similar in the way they both did a good job of hiding from that third sister with the scissors,” Brann muses. “One of them on purpose, and one of them not on purpose.”
It’s a telling inversion. Once, mythology was Mastodon’s shield against the world. On Marrow Deep, it arrives only as a postscript, after the band have already bared their souls in plain English.
“Hopefully,” Brann continues, “it ends the record on a hopeful note.”
Having navigated the brutal gauntlet of the last 18 months, the grief hasn’t vanished, but for the first time in years, Mastodon feel bound together by something far greater than mere survival. They are looking to the future.
“All five of us want to be here for all the right reasons,” Troy says. “All five of us are very much in sync. We’re all extremely happy to be here and so grateful for every fucking show.”
Whenever someone rides by on a loud motorcycle, I think of Brent first. He was omnipresent in my life.
Bill Kelliher
If Marrow Deep serves as the definitive, bruising conclusion to a traumatic chapter, it also kicks the door wide open to a thrilling new era. Because Nick joined the fold after much of the album was already sketched out, the next Mastodon record will be the first built from the ground up by this newly minted five-piece – a prospect that electrifies Bill.
“I feel like the next record, in another year or two, will showcase even more of Nick and me playing off each other,” he says. “Toward the end of Brent’s time in the band, I was writing most of the rhythms and song structures anyway, and he would come in like a finishing carpenter to add the crazy solos. It’s a similar set-up with Nick, but Nick is much more receptive and absolutely full of fresh ideas.”
“You’re never going to truly replace Brent,” Brann says. “He was a unique unicorn to the 10th power. But Nick is his own kind of unicorn; I love that about him. I love his playing, and I’m excited to dig in more with him writing-wise.”
But it isn’t just the promise of new riffs that has breathed life back into Brann. Given all that’s transpired, we ask him what’s making him happy these days.
“Besides my awesome wife, my cool dog, and all my amazing friends?” he replies. “It’s my kickass band. I feel more confident than ever going onstage knowing that the show is going to be fucking awesome.”
Troy agrees: “Coming off the stage, we look around and get to hug and high-five, because we’ve done this thing that I’ve always called magic. It’s just like, ‘Oh, wow, that was unbelievable. So beautiful. Thank you. I love you.’ ‘Fuck, I love you too, man!’ It’s great.”
“Mastodon now is the band I’ve always wanted to have,” says Bill. “It’s five guys who are all on the same page, who all want to be here, and who want to do what is best for the group. We love getting onstage, making people rock out, making awesome-sounding records, and continuously pushing ourselves. It’s a joy to go out there and do what we do best, which is play some heavy-ass metal and prog rock.”
The scars are permanent, but the uncertainty is gone. Mastodon have spent a quarter of a century turning tragedy into high art, but the view down the road is no longer defined by what they’ve lost – it’s defined by the vast, uncharted territory waiting to be conquered. For a band who have spent their entire existence screaming into the void about death, loss, and the cruel impermanence of time, this might just be the most subversive outcome of all. Not mere survival, but glorious, undeniable renewal.
Marrow Deep is out now
