Reprise RecordsMastodon‘s new album Emperor of Sand arrives today. Like many of the records from the Atlanta metallers, Emperor of Sand is a concept album dealing with tragedies and hardships each band member was facing. Using the metaphor of the “Emperor of Sand,” the album tells a story about suffering from cancer.
Guitarist Bill Kelliher explains that as Mastodon was writing Emperor of Sand, each member was dealing with someone close to them suffering from illness.
“Right when I started working on writing all my riffs and getting together with [drummer] Brann [Dailor], we would get together and we would talk about our moms first,” Kelliher tells ABC Radio. “He would come over to my house, we’d have coffee, and his mom was in the hospital, my mom had cancer and was very very ill.”
“So we’d always start off day by like, ‘How’s your mom doing?’,” he explains. “We’d have our coffee and we’d go downstairs and we’d start riffing out together.”
Previous Mastodon albums dealt with similar hardships: Crack the Skye was a tribute to Dailor’s sister, who committed suicide, and The Hunter honors guitarist Brent Hinds‘ brother, who died in a hunting accident as Mastodon was making the album.
“The four of us are very fortunate to have this magical place and this magical thing called Mastodon that we can pour all of our grief, our anger,” bassist Troy Sanders explains. “Any emotion that we may have, we’re able to channel it all into the art that we call Mastodon.”
“I think it’s a wonderful thing that we’re able to do,” he adds. “This is what we’re living, this is what we’re experiencing, and this is how we’re dealing with it.”
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