Troy Sanders gives an update on Mastodon's next record... or two!
This July, Mastodon released their first new original music in three years with Fallen Torches, unveiled alongside their upcoming Medium Rarities compilation album.
Before the world went somewhat awry, guitarist Bill Kelliher was teasing the track to in January last year, so it took quite a while for the band's vision to be fully realised. But now, speaking exclusively to Kerrang!, bassist Troy Sanders has revealed that we won't have to wait much longer for more new tunes.
“When the touring slate got wiped clean back in March, my Mastodon bandmates and myself were thankfully all on the same page with the mindset that we wanted to be as productive as we possibly could without any actual touring going on," says Troy today. "We all decided to dive in on new music. The thing is that we dove in and we haven’t stopped. One of the good things that’s come out of that is that we now have more material to sift through and work on than we’ve ever had before going into the studio to record. It feels like a real luxury to have more material than we need. We’ve been chipping away a little bit virtually every week all year. We’re super-close to being able to go in there to record...”
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With it already being September, Troy says the chances of a new LP in 2020 are pretty slim, but all the cogs are in motion for a potential release next year.
"We’ve been gearing up towards it. All four of us are super-excited about this one. When we’re all excited, we know that we’re onto something good. We’ve always had the attitude of the selfish artists that we have to love it. We have to think that we’ve created something great. If that’s the case, things will fall into place. We always want other people to like it, though we never really expect people to.”
Earlier this year, Bill stated that the band were pushing their sound forward with the next record, which – when you consider their discography – could realistically mean anything. So has the new sound come into clearer focus since then?
“We’re not doing a double-album, but at the moment we have ideas for more than one album," says Troy. "It’s all being dissected and truly honed in on right now. There’s a lot of everything going on in that giant pool of potential songs – particularly in the deep end. We’ve got multitudes of sounds going on. Honestly, it is a little too early to tell.”
One thing we might be seeing soon, though, has been teased on guitarist Brent Hinds' Instagram. In the image we see all four band members as chefs and looking a little worse for wear. But Troy is reluctant to reveal too much...
"That's something that will hopefully make us all laugh next week. We did a little thing with the intention of bringing some giggles to people. You'll see when it's out. I hope you'll laugh..."
Mastodon's Medium Rarities is out this Friday (September 11). Check out their appearance in The K! Pit last year below.
