We’re letting the ideas just come and setting them to the side for future work, and once in a while just sort of saying out loud what those ideas might be - whether they’re collected onstage when we’re doing soundcheck or if they are something that gets worked on backstage. We’re always a work in progress, trying to figure out what we’re going to do next. On whether the wheels are turning on Mastodon’s next album, the follow-up to Emperor of Sand Pretty stoked to be heading out with those guys. They’ve been doing their thing forever and they do what they want and play what they feel, and don’t necessarily pay attention to trends, which is a good thing. is just another one of those legendary bands. Mascis is just a definite visionary, guitar player, and great drummer, too. they’re just a cool band, have been doing their own thing. And we were like, “If they’re into it, we’d definitely would want to do that.” Once the idea got brought up, all of us were on board. And we’ve been big Primus fans since they came out. Bungle getting big and Primus getting big, obviously people were ready for some more interesting music to be popular. On paper, you wouldn’t think that they would be as popular as they are, even from the get-go, a bass-guitar fronted band, most people would be like, ‘What? No.” But man, when they first burst on the scene, I think people were ready for something different, ready for lots of things different with bands like Mr. I think that Primus are one of those hole-in-the-theory sort of bands. We always try to pair up with bands who are, I guess, mavericks - bands who have been doing their own thing and continue to do their own thing. On Mastodon’s recent tour with Primus and upcoming trek with Dinosaur Jr.

And I remember looking through those, and thinking, “Wow, comic books are different!” The graphic novels sort of upped the ante, and the art form had gone to a different place, so it was kind of cool. A couple of close friends of mine who were a little older than me, I used to go over to their house, listen to some King Diamond and thumb through those because they were really into that series. Sometime in the mid to late ’80s, some of the Frank Miller stuff started to come out, some of the graphic novels that were a little more risque, a little more adult, a little more brutal, kind of violent.

I liked Spider-Man, I liked Batman, I liked Thor. I didn’t really have a comic-book allegiance when I was a kid. So, I could empathize with that, so I just tried to mine the story for all the visuals and somehow put that into a few verses. Everything he was doing was sort of working against that. He had lost someone close to him and wanted revenge, but he also wanted to try to save his city. And with “Red Death”, I was just immediately able to see it. Are you interested in doing this? You want to do anything with this?” I finally sat down and said OK, let me dig into this graphic novel and see if anything floats my boat, where I can get some kind of visual thing happening to where I can write lyrics and feel some kind of connection with one of these Batmans from this extended Batman universe. It can be an exhausting process.Ī few months later, he got back in touch with me and said, “Hey man, I just wanna circle back around on this. Every record that we do, when it finally comes out, it’s like you’ve been through the ringer. He was asking for me to do it right when Emperor of Sand came out and we were like full-bore promoting that, and coming out of that album being birthed, I guess, the last thing I wanted to do was try to create something new. I mean who can compete with Prince’s “Batdance”. I’m a Batman fan, but I guess I never considered writing music about Batman. Well, I had been asked a few times by Mike Elizondo, who produced The Hunter with. On his solo track “Red Death” and its tie-in with the Batman graphic novel Dark Days: The Road to Metal

I guess you can say that it lends itself to the longevity of our personal four-way relationship, but it’s just one piece that’s maybe very telling on the outside of how we interact with one another and how we get along. I guess that kind of freedom and that kind of attitude and respect for one another’s personal freedom and musical endeavors is just part of are overall treatment of each other and how we act towards one another.

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