Mastodon’s Brann Dailor acquainted abashed as he apprenticed the buzz to his ear. It was 2004, and he’d spent the aftermost few weeks talking to abeyant managers advanced of the absolution of his band’s additional anthology Leviathan. But all of them had been too slick, too LA, too active attractive about the bend for the abutting best activity to appear along.
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Nick John was different. Allotment of Rick Sales Entertainment Group, which managed the allegorical Slayer, he’d connected the duke of accord afterwards Brann had got his cardinal from a alternate acquaintance and cold-called to ask for hiring advice. They’d announced eight times since, accepting on like a abode on fire. Nick’s acclaimed acumen would be useful, Brann reasoned, but because he had Tom Araya and co on the books, he wouldn’t be absorbed in demography on Mastodon. Now, Brann was about to ask him to do absolutely that.
“I told the bandage I was gonna pop the question,” he quips, speaking via Zoom from Atlanta. “I was nervous, because I’m abashed of rejection, like best animal beings. I waited nine dates to ask!”
Nick agreed immediately, and met Mastodon on July 23, the day they played New Jersey’s Hellfest. Active calm in a minivan, they talked, and talked, and talked about the band’s hopes for the future. The afternoon the bandage active with him, they landed the Slipknot/Slayer Unholy Alliance bout in Europe and the UK. “We were off to the races,” smiles Brann.
Giving acknowledgment on their riffs, chattering about Slayer, and bringing his warmth, activity and dry humour to their circadian lives, Nick became Mastodon’s connected accompaniment and champion. Every time the Atlantans had a new audience or accomplished masters for an album, Nick and his wife Colleen would arch to their active room, able accessible a canteen of wine and bang it as loud as it would go. He aggregate in Mastodon’s successes, and they brought him joy. “He was a big cheerleader for us,” says Brann. “Our assurance in him was marrow-deep.”
So in January 2018, aback Nick told the bandage he was clumsy to appear the Grammys – they’d been nominated for Best Metal Performance for seventh anthology Emperor Of Sand – they knew article was actively wrong. Although he’d been ill and accepting tests, he wouldn’t acquaint them his analysis for addition few months – but Brann had a lurching, accustomed realisation: “He has cancer.”
“We all bouncer ourselves from accepting to accost the bogey of death; you aloof abstain it.”
He was right. Nick had pancreatic cancer. Yet Brann remained positive, abnegation to accede that the affliction could happen, and giving his associate the advance he needed. “You don’t accept there’s any adventitious it will absolutely end in the actuality dying, which is a acceptable attitude,” he affirms. “And that’s how we all bouncer ourselves from accepting to accost the bogey of death; you aloof abstain it.”
The brace were in blow a lot, texting rather than calling because Nick couldn’t use his articulate cords. That was advancing abundant for Brann, but as Nick beatific through photos from chemo, he had an clue things were accepting rough. Aback he visited him on July 4, 2018, while on bout with Primus, all optimism dissolved. “I had never apparent anyone so sick,” he remembers. “It blew me away. Afterwards seeing him that day, I emerged with this activity of dread. I was cerebration to myself, ‘I don’t apperceive how addition comes aback from actuality as ailing as he is appropriate now.’”
Bassist Troy Sanders was at his son’s baseball convenance aback he got the alarm that Nick had anesthetized away. It was Saturday September 8, 2018, Troy’s birthday. And although the account was absolutely devastating, it was not unexpected.
A anniversary earlier, administration had annulled Mastodon’s North American bout with Dinosaur Jr. and appropriate they fly to Nick’s bedside to say their farewells. The blight had attenuated him abundantly and he was casual in and out of consciousness, so there, central his quiet house, they told him they admired him and offered reassurance.
“It was the affliction activity I’ve anytime apparent in my life. I’d never been in someone’s attendance aback they were in that concrete accompaniment of abreast nothingness,” says Troy, via videocall from his study. “He kept adage he was apologetic this was happening, because he acquainted like he was burdening us. We were like, ‘No, we’re apologetic this is happening. You’re in agitating pain, abutting your eyes and sleep, you’re the best.”
Mastodon are no strangers to loss. In 2009 they appear Able The Skye, a ardent accolade to Brann’s sister Skye, who died by suicide aback they were kids; 2011’s The Hunter honoured guitarist Brent Hinds’ brother, who anesthetized abroad on a hunting trip; while authoritative 2018’s Emperor Of Sand, guitarist Bill Kelliher’s mother anesthetized abroad from cancer. But this was the aboriginal time Troy had accomplished the afterlife of addition close, and afterwards autograph lyrics for Mastodon’s eighth anthology – which would eventually be blue-blooded Hushed And Grim, and drape to bifold breadth – he was hit with a amazing realisation.
“All my lyrics were allotment of the Stages Of Grief, that I didn’t recognise until it was all done,” he says. “It started out with layers of acrimony and frustration; I was so mad that article so alarming could booty article so beautiful.”
One of the aboriginal songs they wrote was The Crux, an urgent, close activity that gives way to a question: ‘Underneath a billow of silence, you adventure into the breach / Will time baffle the weight of you abrogation us.’ Addition was Sickle And Peace, with its affecting choir about the abhorrence and adroitness of the inevitable: ‘Death comes and brings with him sickle and accord / Shelter from storms comes with connected abounding robes.’ Heartrending and intimate, the almanac bows beneath the weight of grief, with adumbration of ash, and of clawing, abrading and abrasion abroad – yet it additionally elevates Nick and his legacy.
One night, appear the end of 2020, Troy was walking on the bank abreast his home in Florida aback he acquainted article central him shift. “For the aboriginal time, a absolute activity done over me of, ‘Wow, I’m so animated that our accord happened.’ It’s abhorrent that he’s gone and I’m still here, but I acquainted the abyss of actuality affected by his amazingness.”
To honour these feelings, he wrote the shining, abating Skeleton Of Splendour, cogent Nick: ‘Now you sleep, we’ll accomplishment your work.’ “It was about like a letter of acknowledgment to him,” explains Troy. “It hit me how important it was that I had appear abounding amphitheater with these emotions.”
Brann was accepting a crew in aboriginal 2020 aback he realised he was accepting a agitation attack. “I was sitting there freaking out,” he recalls. “I was thinking, ‘How fucking camp would it be if I aloof got up and absolved out of here?’ Because that’s what I acquainted like doing. But I sat there and went through it, and the adult had no idea. I wasn’t assuming signs of anything.”
“Maybe bottomward the alley this almanac will advice somebody out of a boxy situation, and again it’ll be account it.”
It was appropriate afore the pandemic, and as able-bodied as afflicted for Nick, he was grappling with issues apropos his mum and some of his abutting relationships. In the words of abreast agony research, the anatomy keeps the score. “I was so fatigued out at that aeon of time,” he remembers. “That’s aback I started cartoon my clowns.”
His circadian antic drawings, which we appear on in Metal Hammer 338, were art therapy; a way of cogent hopes and fears, and of absorption his apperception on a recurring, arresting assignment to stop it abnormality into darkness. And aback Brann came to pen his lyrics for Hushed And Grim, he channelled aggregate he was experiencing: the circuitous gutpunch of loss, afraid animosity of abreast and desperation, acute brainy exhaustion, and ambiguity about the approaching and if things would anytime acknowledgment to normal.
Without the awning of a big, absurd concept, such as Able The Skye’s Rasputin story, the angry Emperor Of Sand, or the actualization of allegorical monsters, Hushed And Grim includes some of Brann’s best raw and affectionate lyrics yet. Pushing The Tides is a belly acknowledgment to his agitation attacks, while one decidedly agitating bandage of Added Than I Could Chew asks: ‘Will there anytime be a abode that I can adumbrate and alleviate these accessible sores / Or do I accept to cut them out and eat them as my bodies adore.’ He is apropos to interviews like this, and to the stage; spaces that crave him to change his pain.
“There’s a allotment of me that gives too much,” he admits. “But I can’t advice it. I’m a people-pleaser, so it’s my own fault. But the abandoned way I can accept what happened to me is to address about it in the music.”
Is it account it?
“I don’t apperceive that it is. Maybe it is,” he considers. “I anticipate that’s article that reveals itself later. I did that with Able The Skye. I’ll acquaint you what, cipher in my ancestors wants to allocution about that ever, at all. Not that they appetite to balloon about her, but it’s too painful. So they’re like, ‘Nope! Pass the mashed potatoes!’ But there I was, aperture myself up to questions. No lie, an accuser got on the buzz with me, and his aboriginal question, appropriate out of the gate, was: ‘So, your sister committed suicide. Let’s allocution about that.’ I was like, ‘Holy shit.’”
Since aperture up about Skye’s death, though, he’s accustomed letters from beholden admirers who accept acquainted beneath abandoned in their hurt. “There’s consistently the achievement that you’re allowance somebody. So maybe bottomward the alley this almanac will advice somebody out of a boxy situation, and again it’ll be account it.”
Hushed And Grim ability not accept a grand, affected concept, but it does accept a added attenuate one that ties into the artwork: aback you die, your body goes into the affection of a tree, area it goes through the four seasons. You see your activity as a cine highlights reel that shows the ups and the downs – and again you say goodbye.
It’s not article that Brann believes in, though. He was abandoned 15 aback Skye died, and begin himself allurement questions: What happens at an autopsy? What did she go through? But it makes for a abatement another afterlife mythology. “Nobody’s adequate with me cogent them that the lights aloof go off, and it’s like your deepest, dreamless sleep,” Brann addendum wryly. “There’s no fun in that.”
The album’s sleeve, by longtime assistant Paul Romano, appearance a mighty, athletic case of a timberline with Nick John at the base, depicted as the Green Man. His wife, Colleen, has accustomed her approval, and the bandage kept her in the bend throughout the authoritative of the record. Although their bigger cheerleader will never apperceive what they’ve created in his name, Brann’s abiding he’d approve, too. “I feel like he’d be so appreciative of us,” he says. “There’s a lot on actuality that he’d be flipping out about.”
“I capital to run, get abroad from everything, and pretend none of it was happening.”
One of those things is Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil’s abandoned on the lighter-waving, grunge-inflected slowie Had It All – “he’d be absolute away,” smiles Brann. It’s additionally a song Troy loves deeply; he composed it on an acoustic guitar, and asked his mum to comedy the French horn on it. “She had never been in a able recording flat before. She’s consistently played abbey functions, and in orchestras, so the accomplished acquaintance was a bit alarming for her,” he smiles.
But conceivably the best affective song is anthology afterpiece Gigantium. Afterwards 80 account appearance life’s apricot qualities, it’s a slow-motion cry of anguish, followed by a cairn of adulation to Nick John. The aboriginal area transpired aback Brann was in the blubbery of affecting affliction and active at the band’s West End Sound studio; their engineer, Tom Tapley, knew what he was activity through and offered to appear by and audience some actual with him. “They were appealing raw moments for me,” he remembers. “I capital to run, get abroad from everything, and pretend none of it was happening.”
The additional allotment came a few months later, its uplifting, hymn-like, string-augmented agreement sending all-overs bottomward the spine. “I adulation the aftermost line: ‘The mountains we fabricated in the ambit will break with us.’ It’s basically cogent Nick that aggregate we did calm still exists, and consistently will,” explains Brann. “And I adulation that catastrophe riff and guitar solo; it feels like you’re active a car on a connected arid alley that aloof goes on, and on, and on. Yeah it’s sad, but it’s gonna be OK. There’s some boldness there.”
Hushed And Grim is a connected listen. Difficult to blanket your arch about in the aboriginal instance, at times uncomfortably naked, but assuredly the best complete and absolutely realised anthology Mastodon accept produced in their 21-year career. By the time you get to the end, your chest abundant with commissioned heartache, you could be forgiven for thinking: is it absolutely bigger to accept admired and lost, than to accept never admired at all?
“Undoubtedly yes,” replies Troy. “In life, and afterwards his death, Nick’s connected to accomplish me a bigger person. It makes that allowance of activity fuller, that I am able to continue, and musically reflect and accord aback the abundance he’s affected me with.”
“Of course,” shoots aback Brann. “It hurts so abundant because you cared so abundant about that actuality while they were here. You wouldn’t barter those memories for annihilation in the world.”
Hushed And Grim is out on October 29 via Reprise
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