Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher has revealed the band have written a song for upcoming movie Bill & Ted Face The Music.
The film, starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, is scheduled to hit the silver screen later this year, with Dean Parisot in the director's chair for the follow-up to 1991’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.
Speaking with the RRBG podcast, Kelliher says: “We got asked a couple of months ago to be a part of the new Bill & Ted movie, to put a song in there. So we wrote a song which we’re wrapping up now. It’s pretty fun.”
Kelliher goes on to say that working on a track for Hollywood comes with its own challenges, and says director Parisot wasn’t too keen on part of the track when he first heard it.
Kelliher adds: “We wrote a killer fucking song and the music director – the one that chose us – he loves the song, but the director was like, ‘This is clashing with that.’ I'm like, ‘You've had it for months. Why didn't you tell us months ago?' Especially now with the pandemic. Nobody's in the same room together!”
All seems to be on track though, with Kelliher also touching on how work has been progressing on the follow-up to 2017’s Emperor Of Sand. He reports that Mastodon have “about 20 rough songs recorded” but work has temporarily stopped due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Asked about the direction of the new material, Kelliher says: “It's all relative to who's writing. With Emperor Of Sand, my mom was really sick with brain cancer and tragically passed away when I was in the heart of writing that.
“I was getting a lot of my demons in my riffs out for that record in particular. With this new record, it's kind of the same. I've definitely been writing like a madman, like crazy.
"It's different than Emperor Of Sand, but there's definitely a vibe going on. It's definitely got more Neurosis heaviness, simplified guitar parts – and Brann Dailor, he always demos most of the vocal ideas because he always has melodies. He’s been singing on a lot of it, at least for the demo purposes.
“The vocals are kind of Asleep In The Deep style – kind of Radiohead-ish: real melodic with a lot of vocal harmonies.”
Kelliher adds: “We still don't have all of Brent Hinds' songs in there yet, and there's still a lot of time for that stuff to change and to morph into other stuff. Time will tell which ones will be the keepers and make it on the record.”
Mastodon paused work on their new studio album last year to head out on the road with Coheed And Cambria on the The Unheavenly Skye Tour.
