Mastodon’s Brann Dailor Talks Tour With Opeth, Mushrooms + More
Mastodon are gearing up to hit the road with fellow metal heavyweights Opeth starting this week. The tour will hammer its way to The Intersection in downtown Grand Rapids on April 14. Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor called us to talk about the upcoming road trip, their album The Hunter, watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force while trippin' on 'shrooms and more.
Mastodon released The Hunter in September of last year to much critical acclaim. Almost every major music publication gave it "metal album of the year"-type honors. This album saw Dailor contribute more vocally than in previous discs.
"Ever since I was a kid, I've played in bands and never felt like I was just the drummer to just sit back and let everyone else do the work," Dailor states. "I always wanted to get involved as much as I can artistically and try to write music and lyrics. I like to throw my artistic hat into the ring so to speak."
Dailor continues: "This album wasn't really that much different. I felt like just to call everybody and make sure we get this thing done. This album came together pretty quickly and pretty easily. We needed The Hunter to be a stress free experience as far as the writing is concerned. We sort of went in the most under-prepared we've ever been to record a record."
Mastodon are known to have a sense of humor. An animated version of the band (well, animated into movie concession food) are shown at the beginning of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, warning the audience not to be jerks at the theater or they will cause violence to them. Dailor shares how the guys are huge fans of the Adult Swim series.
"Aqua Teen Hunger Force is one of our favorite cartoons that we watch all the time on tour," states the drummer. "We're in Europe watching it and everybody is trippin' on 'shrooms. It's like, 'Oh my God, this is the best show ever!' Then a couple years later we got contacted by them and they wanted us to work with them."
"We're lucky to live in the city of Atlanta where Adult Swim is based. There's a lot of opportunity for us to do stuff with them. I think there's some more stuff coming in the near future. It's always a good time with Adult Swim. You can always kind of exercise the most ridiculous facets of your imagination and they'll put it on TV."
Listen to the entire interview below. Tickets to see GRD present Mastodon and Opeth April 14 at The Intersection are still available at the venue box office and SectionLive.com.
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