Mastodon: “It's refreshing to be a little childish"

In 2009, heavyweight Atlantan riffologists Mastodon released Crack the Skye – an epic and emotionally exhausting affair, envisioned as a complete work to be taken as a whole. It was the culmination of everything the band had achieved up until that point – from their trademark aggression and energy to the historical, literary and thematic influences shown throughout their previous three albums, with its story bringing together ideas about the cosmos, wormhole theories and Tsarist Russia into one huge, sprawling concept album. It also brought another wave of critical appraisal for a band who seemed to be operating at their creative and artistic peak.

Mastodon come back down to earth this month with The Hunter, marking the quartet's first full-length outing without a unifying theme; bassist and vocalist Troy Sanders makes it clear that this is simply the sound of a band with a new outlook: “We abandoned the idea of ‘the concept.’ The previous four touched on fire with Remission, water with Leviathan, earth with Blood Mountain and the ether with Crack the Skye. We wrote these four chapters of ‘elements’ and closed that book; we had a fresh, clean slate to work with.”

At first look, the band's approach certainly seems to have changed, even before indulging in the music. Instead of employing their usual aesthetic collaborator Paul Romano (Earth, dälek, Jedi Mind Tricks), The Hunter’s cover art shows off an intimidating wood sculpture of a Minotaur head created by AJ Fosik. The video for lead single Black Tongue shows the painstaking process behind it, standing as a metaphorical reboot for Mastodon, as if they've rebuilt themselves from the ground. “We were changing everything,” says Sanders. “We changed our sound, we got a new record producer [Mike Elizondo, more renowned for producing huge Dr Dre records], changed our logo and got a new artist for the album art. Everything was going great, but we embrace the idea of flipping the coin.”

Stripped down and refined, their new direct approach to songcraft (complete with tongue-in-cheek titles like Stargasm and The Octopus Has No Friends), Mastodon seem ready to show off the playful side that has often shone through in interview. “It's refreshing to be a little childish at moments on this record,” concurs Sanders. “We wrote lyrics like 'If you are sad and need to cry/then turn around and go outside'. It sounds like a four-year-old wrote that...”

Mastodon's intention with The Hunter seems to have been to create a solid, honest rock and roll record rather than an overly serious, heavy epic – looser, leaner and less intense than before. “Oh yeah, it's a rock and roll record,” Sanders nods. “I never even considered us as a metal band. There's a big part of us that's rooted in metal, but there's a big part of us that's rooted in bluegrass and psychedelic rock and 70s classic rock and all sorts. I like the term rock and roll a lot better.”

That diversity reflects in the wide array of bands Mastodon has toured with – from Queens of the Stone Age and Slayer through to The Mars Volta and Neurosis to name just a few – and it’s a privilege they don’t take for granted. “It's always an honour to be asked to support all these bands that are heroes of ours,” Sanders beams. “I mean, we’re going out with Soundgarden next month; that's a big deal – they flipped my world upside down twenty years ago.”

A lot has changed, then, since Crack the Skye – the last time The Skinny talked to the band, guitarist Bill Kelliher admitted that they looked to the monolithic Metallica as career role models, both in terms of their longevity and stature. What does success mean to Mastodon in 2011? Sanders looks at the band's achievements to date: “For us being able to play 150 gigs a year and sell a total of 50,000 copies worldwide of each album, to me, that’s hugely successful. I never imagined that happening. As far as being a mega-band – that's one in a million. Who knows? I'm very happy with the position that our band is in now. I think we're too ugly to get really popular!”