Mastodon have spoken about the moment that they discovered that their former guitarist Brent Hinds was dead.
Bill Kelliher, Troy Sanders and Brann Dailor were awaiting the arrival of their bags in the baggage claim area of Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport when Kelliher's mobile phone rang, displaying an incoming call from Hinds' ex wife Raisa Moreno. The three musicians instinctively knew that this was no mere social call.
"I was like, He's either fucking really gone off the rails and he's in jail, or he's killed somebody… Or he's dead'," vocalist/guitarist Kelliher admits in a new interview with Kerrang! "And it was the latter."
A founding member of the Atlanta, Georgia band, who played on every release from their 2001 debut EP Slick Leg through to 2021's Hushed And Grim album, their eighth studio collection, Hinds died on August 20, 2025 when his Harley-Davidson motorcycle collided with an SUV in Atlanta. The guitarist had parted company with Mastodon five months earlier, the split initially conveyed as an amicable parting, a notion subsequently shot down by Hinds in a succession of angry, accusatory social media posts.
"He was going through very, very difficult times," Troy Sanders acknowledges in the Kerrang! interview. "I don’t mean to cheapen it, but with his unhinged love of life and free spirit, he was one of two people in my life where I always felt I would get ‘the phone call’ and be very saddened, but not surprised. I hope that doesn’t sound cold."
Mastodon recently shared a powerful and emotional 35-minute film titled The Mastodon in the Room, detailing the circumstances which led to Hinds' exit.
Brann Dailor describes the day Hinds left the band as "horrible" but says that the decision to cut him loose came from "a place of love."
"It was really depressing and sad and fucked up," says the drummer. "And we just wanted that beautiful, amazing creature, Brent Hinds, to be out there serving up the honey-baked ham and screaming his head off and playing, ripping amazing, incredible, beautiful solos. We desperately wanted that guy, but he showed us time and time and time and time and time again that that person wasn't coming back without some kind of dramatic change.
"We really were coming from a place of love," he adds. "It's like, maybe this will be like some kind of bottom for him. You know what I mean? You never know. We had to set some boundaries and we had to take care of our own sort of mental health."
Watch the film below.
