Mastodon med ny singel

Divinations er første singel fra Mastodons kommende fjerdealbum Crack The Skye. Mastodon kommer til Oslo Spektrum 17. juni og 30. juli som support for Metallica.

Hør låten på bandets myspace, link nederst på siden.

Bandet selv kaller Crack The Skye for The Album of Our Lives, under kan du lese hva bandet sier om albumet og låt for låt.

Bill Kelliher (guitars): This is the record we’ve always wanted to make. We finally made it! I just got back from the dentist and listened to it on my iPod and I started hearing more things that I hadn’t noticed before. It was great. Awesome. Basically, “Wow! This is really us!” It’s kind of hard to believe. We’ve come a very long way since our very first EP, so a huge sense of accomplishment came over me. I was thrilled. I’m really proud of everyone and the job we all did.

Brann Dailor (drums, vocals, and percussion): When I listen to it, I feel as if I’ve just come out of a heavy movie. The first couple of times I heard it through I couldn’t talk for about half an hour. Took me a while to come down from it.

Brent Hinds (lead guitar, vocals, and banjo): It’s almost like it could give you a music hangover. There’s a lot of music going on. I’m impressed, even though it came from us. I listened to it and was like, “I’m so proud of these dudes!” I love those guys and am proud of this.

Troy Sanders (bass, vocals, and bass synth): Hopefully the album is a reflection of the emotional journey that we’ve sunk into its creation. After challenging all our emotions in the spectrum, I would hope the listeners will reflect on some of what we put into it. It’s not just seven songs, but an up-and-down journey. It was to truly dig in and pull personal inspiration from both the darkest and dearest parts of our souls, and simultaneously with our wonder and amazement of the entire universe.
Its two totally different things, diving into a small part of your soul and then being mesmerized with the wonders of our universe. Those things don’t really seem to match. But from that dearest spot within our souls, to the outer limits of our universal imagination, we’ve furthered our attempt to make a record that follows the steps of us wanting to trek through our journey, taking the most natural and brutally honest next step of Mastodon’s evolution.

Bill: Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s even, when you bought a record like … And Justice For All or Kill ‘Em All or Reign In Blood, you put the record on and listened to it until it was done and then flipped it over and started again. We’re from the old school trying to bring that back. Take your life off “shuffle” and put the whole thing on and then you’ll see the whole picture. We’ve always tried to do that – and with this one we did.

This Time It’s Personal

Brann: There are some moments I put in there from a very specific time in my life, which I’ve never really done before. The music really called for it. Brent wrote most of the music and Brent, Troy, and I wrote most of the lyrics. Brent has dug deeper with the music and there was stuff in my past I hadn’t really touched on lyrically before. I felt this was the perfect opportunity.

Bill: After the MTV Video Music Awards, Brent was badly injured.

Troy: We got this call that one of our brothers had brain injuries. That could be death or permanent damage to his motor skills. For a moment there, we were truly in shock, but first and foremost, we were concerned about our friend’s well-being. None of us has ever taken our band and career and wonderful experiences for granted. We know that any day, no matter what, anything can be stripped from you. That would have been devastating. And it did cross our minds that that this could have been our last day as Mastodon. That last night could have been our last gig.

Brann: The Brent thing brought us closer. We had to forge ahead. Brent’s in the hospital, fucked up, but we need to go to the practice space. I don’t care if we write anything, but we need to go there and be there and be in this band. And when he comes back he’ll be back.

Troy: It affected me and the whole band the same. It takes moments like that in your personal life or band life or job life or anything – you have to step back, reconfigure your intentions of where your thoughts and desires are. It affected our whole thinking process and every emotion on the album. We were forced to take moments to step back and realize something more sincere.

Brent: I was so glad to be alive when it was all over. So glad to be have my motor skills back and be able to function again. I was laid up pretty hardcore for a couple of months. So when I finally started playing guitar again I was really into playing guitar. It was a creative outburst. Don’t know if it came from the accident or not. But when I found out I was okay, I was really excited about playing guitar. Now I’m already tired of it and someone can knock me out again.

Bill: There’s a lyric in the song “Oblivion” that goes: “Fall from grace, because I’ve been away so long.” The way I think of that is Brent singing about his own injury or where he was out of it for a few months. The album has a personal side, but jumps around a little. It’s not just a whole record about a certain thing. There are lyrics about black holes and secret societies and wormholes and the magnet of wisdom. I don’t know exactly what it means. But the content really paints a picture in your head. A magnet of wisdom? What is that? Some giant brain in the universe pulling things toward it? I love it. Not like any other band or writing that I’ve ever seen or heard before. It’s cool.

Getting Conceptual

Brent: We were thinking about the next element. We’ve got water with our album Leviathan and earth in Blood Mountain. So what next? Skye, the spelling is Brann’s sister, who passed away as a kid. That’s her name. He has it tattooed on his neck. Blood Mountain was metaphorically about us signing with Warner Bros., climbing this mountain. Now the hard part is to impress these guys and show we’re worth every dime they’ve put into us. Leviathan was about chasing the white whale, which we could understand — getting into our white van and leaving our families and friends and jobs like those fishermen did. Crack The Skye could mean we’re going through the roof with this one. Go up and crack a hole in the sky.

Bill: There are songs telling a story from one man’s eyes. I don’t know if “ambiguous” is the right word, but there is purposeful double meaning. It’s more about what you think it means, so you can form your own opinion. It touches on Rasputin and the Czar and the plotting and murder of him — also stepping out of your body and astral planning.

Brann: This story is a multi-dimensional journey starting in present day. Leaving a crippled body using astral travel, up into outer space, too close to the sun. Ripped into a wormhole and sent to the spirit realm. Convincing sprits that you’re not one of them. Channeling you into a Russian Orthodox sect called the Khlysty in the early 20th century. Into Rasputin’s body for his assassination. Out of his body and up through a crack in the sky and passing through the Devil’s dominion without being dragged to hell and back into present day.

Means of Production

Bill: Working with Brendan O’Brien, this was the time to get busy with a real guy. We had opportunities to do a lot more on this record than on the last couple of records. There’s more concept; it’s a more layered record. For us it’s always been about the whole record as a piece. We had 15 songs to choose from and it happened that seven of those sounded like they were coming from the same direction.

Troy: We felt it was the hand of fate that fell upon us. We had meetings with Brendan over coffee here in Atlanta and he said, “There are a lot in the demos I like. What kind of record do you want to make?” We said we had a classic rock feel in mind. There are a lot of those elements in it. And that’s what he is, from Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan — he’s a rock ‘n’ roll producer. And he works and lives here in Atlanta and we really wanted to work at home. And Brendan said, “Well, I was already committed to doing AC/DC so I can get to you when that’s done.” And we said, “Dude! That’s perfect!” We felt we were following in another great set of footsteps. Only furthered the coolness factor.
He brought an extremely natural representation of what Mastodon sounds like live. Not a lot of bells and whistles, not a lot of compression. Raw yet big-sounding representation of what Mastodon plainly is. Bringing our keyboard player was wonderful too. Brann kept it stripped down so we were able to add keys here, piano there, a little banjo as an intro, but overall stripped down, raw and big.

Brann: Scott Kelly from Neurosis sang on the title song. He’s one of our really close friends and it was important to us to include him on the record. That riff, we heard his vocals all over it and he’s no stranger to tragedy so he knew what to do.

Progressive Policies

Bill: I was a fan of early Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and King Crimson. They would have 15- or 20-minute songs and you wouldn’t even notice the length. It was like a movement — something real happening before my eyes to watch a band like that. All of us come from that school. I know we’re all in our 30s, but we can all relate. Kids today need that. They need a good dose, not copied from the ‘70s, but new versions. Progressive on top of progressive, on the roots of Mastodon, still those heavy things and have your fans grow with you. There’s no formula. We can play any style we want for as long as we all feel it.
And on this record there’s a lot more singing and harmonizing, less screaming. We’re honing our skills in our music. More hard rock than dirty Southern metal. Some bands can be pigeonholed and stay in the genre they came up with. But we needed to really step it up this time. We just made a better record than the last record and that’s what we want to do the rest of our lives.

Brann: It feels like we’re a new band — like we cracked some wall. It’s a really good place to be. Collectively, we’ve all been doing music our whole lives, the last nine years together, and you wonder when this is gonna fizzle out. But for it to change like this at this point, and be this new fresh thing has really revitalizes everybody. It puts a whole new spin on the project and I feel we’ve almost reinvented ourselves. As heavy as the record is for me to listen to, it makes me think, “Wow! Now we’re on this trip and the next few records will keep evolving in this style.”

“Crack the Skye”- Song-by-Song perspective


OBLIVION:

Brann: There wasn’t too much of a battle for what would be the first song, but there were a couple things in the running to open the record. We always come out swinging. Our records always open big and fast and heavy, “Blood and Thunder” with Leviathan, “The Wolf Is Loose” with Blood Mountain. I don’t know if you call it tradition after four records, but it’s tradition — get the kids’ heads moving. For this, “Oblivion” is the perfect introduction to the album. The album’s a total journey and the opening notes of this song are perfect: slower and different for us, but still big and epic. “Comes on, Oooh! Air of foreboding. Oooh! What’s around the corner?” Perfect way to open the record.

Brent: The heavy beginning. Then when the intro’s over and it comes in talking about flying beyond, I thought, “Wow, that was fucking cool.” Brann was singing; he came up with the melody, sang it to me, and said “I’ll show you what I’m talking about.” He sang it and I said, “This is so cool.” So I sang it and Brendan was like, “Stop, you’re not accenting this word right.” For some reason I couldn’t get it right. Then Troy did it and nothing sounded as good as when Brann did it as an example. I thought it was cool to open the album with the drummer singing. Comes in Brann singing, then Troy singing and I sing — everyone gets a turn except Bill. He doesn’t really care about singing. Then the guitar solo is killer, we had a great time with that playing around with some old Fender guitars and amps, trying to get some David Gilmour spirit going on. I can hear a little Jerry Cantrell at the beginning. Always been an Alice in Chains fan.

Troy: That’s the initial departure. “I flew beyond the sun before it was time.” Boom! Here we are, we are floating in outer space, not knowing if we’re about to explode, die, or exist on this level. Truly taking it to the next level, which we always try to do with our music on each album.
Brent had some real creepy riffs, that whole intro riff and it went from there. Lyrically, Brann wrote a whole song about floating through space and entering into oblivion, Straightforward in a bizarre way.

Bill: The vocal harmonies on it, that’s what really gets me. I have a soft spot in my heart for Weezer and the Pixies, doesn’t have to be crazy guitar licks. That gets me going, so all the vocal harmonies – I can’t believe this is us! Wow! Something different and really cool for Mastodon.
When it came down to deciding the first song, usually we all fight about that. Can’t make up our mind. Like making a mix tape, make sure they all flow well. Brendan told us right of the bat, “Fuck those who want to put the best song third or fourth. Put your best foot forward right off the bat.” When bands give me CDs on the road or whatever, I do listen to them all. But if the first song doesn’t get me, I’m done. Garbage. Guess we’ll see what happens with the fans who think, “This is different, not what I expected.” But after they listen a couple times they’ll get it.


DIVINATIONS

Troy: Next exploration into any and all things supernatural, dealing with ghosts that some of us have seen, ghosts of peoples’ past and how they will live through you forever. No escaping people that are still with us in spirit.

Bill: That was the first song we had done, as far as writing. That’s “the magnet of wisdom is calling.” What it’s about, I don’t know. It’s a rockin’ song, some cool chicken-picking at the beginning, Brent came in one day and said, “Check this out.” Wow. When it kicks in with the guitar cool and heavy, then has this high-on-fire like surf guitar solo…

Brann: That’s the first song we finished. First we really had under our belts. When Brent and I went in and got it up and running, got it together, the song kicked ass. It has balls. Just was a real mover and shaker. Good head-banging song. If you’re gonna hold a head-banging contest at your house, for whatever reason, that’d be a good one to put on. Shortest song on the record — don’t want anyone to break their neck. And the subject matter was kind of new, first one that had the lyrics about the Khlysty, the Russian cult, yanking that boy out of the spirit realm, using divinations. Another killer guitar solo. More guitar solos on this record than ever before, which is necessary. We have super-talented guitar players and Brent loves to solo, so let him solo.”

Brent: Kind of like the banjo riff. Brendan has a six-string banjo in the studio and he said, “Dude, try it on this.” I did and it sounded awesome. Right now that’s my favorite song on the album — three minutes, classic ingredients. “Tunnels of brilliant light” is really fun to say. I’m a really big fan of saying, “The center of Khlysty surrounds me.” Some ghosts Brann learned about in Russia. First lyrics are: “It’s gone away it’s gone for good.” Was watching Poltergeist and it was from that. I wrote that line. That was my contribution.
And then I wrote, “Fire in the eyes” — some Dragonslayer shit there. Every time I sing that, “Fire in the eyes, realms of mystic majesty,” I see Gandalf standing there. “Robes encased in crystal.” We’re having fun with all this mythology stuff. Fun to write and talk about.


QUINTESSENCE

Brann: I really like it. It emerged as one of my favorites. At first I thought it was disjointed and weird. I like the weirdness, but not sure it would work. Really moody, dark and then gets to an indie-rock Fugazi part in it. Totally different. Here’s the part of the record where people can see we’re branching out and doing something different. But then at the end it’s totally Mastodon. For us as a band, over and over, we’ve proven that people aren’t going to be able to calculate our next move. That’s part of the what keeps our fans coming back. They expect something different, not to hear the same riffs over and over. They want to hear that we’ve been able to come up with new. “Quintessence“ is really a different direction for us. It’s like wearing a Halloween costume on your song. That one part is wearing a Fugazi Halloween costume.

Bill: The very guitar-picky part in the beginning, I remember when I first had my ProTools set-up and everyone would come to my house and we’d jam and Brent putting that down, everything has to grow out of stuff. I was like, “Wow, watch him play!” And it’s tricky as hell. Started jamming it and in the studio he said, “You’re gonna have to play that. I can’t sing and do that.” I thought, “Oh no! I’m not going to be able to do it.” Brent and I have very different styles. They work well together, but whatever he does, I usually don’t play the same thing. He showed me how to play it and I was very proud to learn that finger-picking part, very fast and hard and cool.
Troy went out and bought a Taurus Moog pedal, like what Geddy Lee uses. I thought, “This sounds amazing.” Just very excited about Troy trying another instrument.
Second or third part of it is very pretty; it gets quiet and with the keyboard, it’s kind of a Radiohead-ish sound. Then “Let it go, let it go.” That got chopped up in several different ways until we found the right way and it sounded good. That’s a great heavy chorus, catchy. And then goes into an almost Fugazi-sounding thing.
The chorus — “These wild hearts run,” great lyric, whatever it means. “The demon skin is covered in fine mist,” something about hovering above your body. Yeah. Maybe running free in your mind? The lyrics are more metaphoric and not meant to be “this is a story about someone punching holes in their head.” “Losing my skin to the landslide,” what does that mean? Not really sure. Maybe about letting go, letting your soul go. Might be part of whole out-of-body experience, letting you leave your body when you die. About leaving your body behind and taking off to the omnipresent. [Laughs]

Brent: Party song! Straight-up party song. Starts out pretty Dillinger Escape Plan-ish. Doo doo doo doo doo doodle. That crazy guitar wizardry. Then the song comes in and it’s like the strangest song on the album. Real proggy and real party sounding and then real classic rock and roll classic, like the Clash. Then you get the big slumbering end and can hear the shields failing. That’s one of Troy’s lyrics, “the shields’ failure.” Brendan made the keyboards sound like shields failing.

Troy: Directly dealing with the fifth element of ether. The essence of
Emptiness and the primordial, unmanifested form of sound.
Many believe that ether is the stuff of which celestial gods are made.
Sound and ether are inseparable.
Water, air, fire, and wind all change when intermeshed. Ether does not.
It is the purest element of them all!

THE CZAR

Brent: Oh God, that one! That’s my favorite there, though I heard it too much, so it’s “Divinations” now. Where to begin? How much time do you have? That was actually the first song I wrote for the album. Made this huge, interluding, weaving arpeggiated madness on guitar. “Man, how am I ever going to sing on this stuff?” Then we got the band together. Troy came to my house and put some bass down — boom boom boom. I thought, “Okay, I’ll follow that with lyrics about Rasputin.” Then I pretty much let Brann take over. I had written all the music and tracked the song so after that it was time to go to studio with Brann at his house and we wove majesty through the lyrics. We were on the same page, musical soul mates.
When you write a song that’s 12 minutes long there is no challenge. Only reason there are songs that long is I didn’t know where to stop. Start playing and days and weeks go by and I’m still playing the song.
The guitar solo’s a little Zappa. I love Zappa. A little Zappa, a little Jimmy Page. We opened for Zappa Plays Zappa at Bonnaroo. Dream come true. I met Dweezil and he was super nice.

Brann: That’s probably one of my favorite songs of all time. Total epic classic-rock lick.
As you dig deeper into the record, that song starts to get really crazy. Straight up, the whole first part is totally beautiful — the piano, all the layers, really epic. Love everything that’s going on there, with the guitars and vocals and stuff.
That whole beginning part, the drums are magical. And then comes the big heavy riff, a total rock song. I love my drum beat, totally straight-up funk beat. I’m a big fan of funk — James Brown, a total Stevie Wonder freak. That’s drumming I don’t ever get to do and when those riffs started coming up I thought, “Awesome! Sink my teeth into it.” I love that stuff. That’s what I usually listen to.
So it goes through all that cool funk drumming, the super ‘70s rock moment, then everything drops out and all those noises and the guitar comes in alone, that classic buildup thing. Then we bust into the end, the huge guitar solo. Really proud of that, can’t wait to play it live. That gets me every time. That’s the point of the record where there’s just something more. The lyrics, “I see your face in constellations,” that section there just kills me. We’d bring people in and play the record super fucking loud and get to that part and I’m on the verge of tears. Super connected to that song, that part right here. Pretty much in love with that song, that part especially.

Troy: That’s dealing with the journey from roamer to royalty. We wouldn’t write a long song just for the sake of having an epic song. It has to feel non-repetitive and interesting the entire time or else we would shorten it down. For example, “Divinations” was whittled down to a two-and-a-half-minute song because we felt it made more impact musically. Whereas with the “The Czar,” we didn’t feel it was dragging or too repetitive from start to stop. We’re fortunately able to have an epic journey.

Bill: You can definitely tell it’s about the assassination attempts on Rasputin. Trying to warn him, tell him to run away, “You must escape into the deep black of the nights.” Basically they end up killing him at the end of the true-life story. Poison and stab him, trying to get rid of this crazy person. That’s almost three songs in one, just great and the lyrics are amazing, all the guitar and harmonies in there. Real funk beat in the guitar, bass-line going on in reverse. We do a lot of percussion stuff like tambourines and maracas and wood block in the middle and that was rockin’. Need to turn that up. Lots of keyboard, cool keyboard, spooky evil intro — we’re all about scary intros and evil stuff. It’s an evil story about henchmen gathered and waiting to kill this person. Can’t wait to play it live. Gonna be a bear. Long song but even though it’s 12 minutes long, it gets to the point.

GHOST OF KARELIA

Bill: Troy was playing the second verse of that on bass one day. I started playing the delayed thing over it and he changed to playing what I was playing. We put his other part after that and Brent and Brann showed up and Brent said, “I have this riff and next part and next part.” Turned into a real group effort. All of us in there. Finally demoed it and got to Brendan’s studio and he said, “I’m going to be harsh, some things you don’t need in there.” It was a great song but now it’s an awesome song. Brann and I would go early and try to take the songs apart and rearrange them like jigsaw puzzles, trying to make them better. We worked really hard on getting it right and on a great rockin’ song.

Brann: That was like the real collaborative effort for the band, one of those spontaneous songs that comes from nowhere … completely built in an afternoon. When we finally got into the studio to record it, that’s where it was. Added a couple things but it’s totally awesome, super-heavy in the middle, heavy guitar stuff, lots of double bass, Troy’s vocals came out awesome. Super-powerful, cool lyrics. It’ll be a good song for pyro. I use the gong and then the pyro goes off. People can be excited about fireworks. Love that song. We rented a 46-inch gong for one afternoon just for that song.

Brent: That’s the one song that’s all of us. Complete band collaboration. I love when that happens, when it comes together so easily. I’m into that kind of action.
I like it when it says, “I have stood on many of other planets.” Really awesome stuff I got to sing. Right in the middle— sounds like alien music. Classic-rock tinge. Dude, we are Genesis fuckin’ freaks. The Peter Gabriel stuff.

Troy: It was nice to have a group effort come together cohesively and ultimately making one solid song. I wrote most of the lyrics. That was my main lyrical input to the record. I wrote it when we had a full lunar eclipse six or seven months ago. I was lying on my back in the front yard when that happened, and that’s when the lyrics were inked. The moment when the Moon lies in Venus from the sun and dealing with Aldebaran, a red giant. The eye of the bull in Taurus. The sinister twin refers to Venus and its chokingly thick atmosphere. Just starting tapping into constellations, which was relevant to the story. Mastodon feels like constellation. Constellations are stories that came about when people would create a pattern and tell a story. I was thinking then that Mastodon is a constellation, that’s all we’ve been doing for ten years, creating patterns and telling stories. No-brainer to me.
The other half of the song lyrically was taking from a spiritual journey in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, where they believe the journey of the soul after death determines whether you become a hunger ghost, and crave and suffer forever, or if you were good then reincarnated as a certain animal or human being. That taps into spirituality and supernatural.


CRACK THE SKYE

Brann: “Crack the Skye” definitely ties into the whole theme of when the boy leaves his body and leaves the Earth, leaves the atmosphere, cracks the sky, and when he leaves again through Rasputin’s body he cracks the sky again. The tragedy I was referring to was my sister killing herself when I was a teenager and her name was Skye, so it ties into that. A lot of lyrics are about that situation, but tie into the story.
Hard to go there. But definitely worth it in the end, because your art will come out that much more powerful and will translate to people. Everyone experiences death on some level and if you can articulate that and put it into words, everyone will understand and you can make the connection with human beings, which is the whole reason for making music in the first place.
That was a while ago, 1990. I was 15 and she was 14. That kind of thing changes your whole life. My life kinda goes, moves along and then it stops there and flips over and starts again. Brutal thing, tore my family apart and the bottom fell out and everyone was destroyed and everyone had to fight to get back some sanity. Through all that, I really climbed into my drum set and into playing music, and that’s how I was able to get here. When you’re with a group of amazing musicians who are also very close friends, it’s a great thing to have so you can purge those demons and get through those feelings.
This was the right music. Brent got hit in the head in Las Vegas and after that happened the band was shaken up. We were in a bit of a vulnerable situation, felt all this could be taken away. I kind of saw that Brent was reaching a little deeper, everything for him was real close to the surface. Not to say our previous albums were superficial — they have deep meaning to us. But this went deeper and lyrically I was able to put some stuff out there, go to that place I knew I needed to go because Brent was going there. You don’t want to expose yourself, but some times it’s necessary and it was the perfect material to do that with.
It was a delicate. Shouldn’t be all about me. This is our band. But we really care about each other. And they care about me. If they have some shit, let’s get it out. Let’s let it work in that way.

Brent: I wrote the music, Scott Kelly wrote lyrics, and Brann wrote lyrics. Knowing the subject matter, it is emotional, very moving. [Brann reacting to Brent’s injury] says he’s a cool bro right there. Some real friendship happening there. That says a lot to me. I didn’t know it affected him that way. Glad we’re doing this so I found out! We’re dudes and don’t talk about our feelings. We just write songs about them and let the whole world hear them. Sad but true.

Troy: When Brann was thinking, when it came time for us to do the element of air and either, it was the perfect time for him to confront himself if he felt it to go there. It only makes this more honest and sincere. When he said he wanted to go there, I said it would be amazing. Was thrilled that he was going to the deeper, darker yet more liberating place. Liberating was perfect word — for him and for all of us to a degree.


THE LAST BARON

Bill: Kept getting longer and longer. Got to points where we thought it sounded okay, then Brent and I would go to his house and he’d have all these riffs and say, “I’m gonna add them to that song.” That song starts off nice and innocent and pretty then goes into weird. I picture Mars Volta. Sometimes I write a part and play a part and I automatically think of another band. For some reason I was thinking of the Mars Volta. We write and it’s, “What part now?” Put the Helmet part after the Neurosis part or whatever.
For me, when we were putting the songs in order, not just because it was aptly titled for the final slot, but it seemed a good nightcap, a good ending ballad. Goods solos up and down. Just seemed a good closing song. Gives a synopsis of the whole record. Has beginning, part A and B and C, and then regresses back to part A. It’s a record in itself. Got all the Mastodon elements wrapped up in it.

Brann: This song is just crazy over-the-top and got more over-the-top with Brendan. “Go nuts!” Cool. We have a keyboard player now, so a lot of it we’ll be able to do live. Did a bunch of vocal harmonies and sweeps and that stuff that there — might not be able to have the Vienna Boys Choir join us. But making an album is a completely different thing from a live show, an art form in itself. At some point we’re not going to be playing live and you’ll just have a record to listen to. Like I listen to Mozart’s Requiem on my iPod and he’s been dead for 250 years. Doubt he saw that coming! So we wanted to make something over-the-top. But "The Last Baron" is a classical-sounding song, all these different movements, major resolve at the end, long guitar solo. It’s an epic. The whole beginning part. Awesome. Love that song. Then that part of the story is the end of the story. Hand-in-hand with Rasputin navigating some treacherous ground to get back to the body before it’s too late. Really love that crazy Zappa/Rush thing in the middle. The song is really beautiful but pretty relentless when it gets going. Perfect end-piece for the record.

Brent: Oh man! That was like the second song I crafted after I came out of the haze of Las Vegas. That melody wouldn’t get out of my head so I figured it out on guitar and wrote around that so I could use it in the song. Had all these other riffs. That was a fuckin’ bitch of a song, me and Brann struggled with it for weeks. We came up with an arrangement that wasn’t what we were looking for, so it was trial and error. Long song, 14 minutes or something. But after we found the right key parts it just kind of spilled out on the floor and fell into something. This album was not a struggle to make. Effortless. Exactly how Leviathan was, effortless. We wrote it and did it and kicked ass.
The way this comes down after the intense listening experience you have, that calm soothing noise — it’s psychedelia at its finest. I’m so proud listening to everything, and so glad we met Brendan to help achieve this place we’ve always wanted to go to but could never get to before.

Troy: That’s the final ride home, the epic journey back. Lyrically, that came from Brann, but for me it represents the final journey home. Musically, it sounded like this before we even had lyrics. That long jam and long guitar solo at the end, the final send-off. Took a lot of rehearsing to learn those parts and get it together, the transitions from part to part. Hard to learn that song, but an excellent challenge that we’re always up for. Just because something’s hard doesn’t mean we won’t dig in our heels and go for it. We knew we had something there and if we explored it right, the end result would be a victory.




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