Mastodon Writing Song for ‘Bill and Ted Face the Music’

Mastodon have been quiet of late, but that doesn’t mean that work isn’t progressing on new music. During a chat with the RRBG podcast (as heard below), guitarist Bill Kelliher revealed that the band has “20 rough songs” recorded, and that they’ve been working on a song for the upcoming Bill and Ted movie.

“We got asked a couple months ago to be a part of the new Bill and Ted movie, to put a song in there. So we wrote a song to be in that movie which we’re kind of wrapping now,” said the guitarist of Bill and Ted Face the Music, which is currently on the schedule for an Aug. 21 release.

As for their next album, Kelliher revealed, “Mastodon hasn’t worked since last summer. We’ve been taking this time off to relax and to write a new record, and we were kind of right in the middle of it… we had about, I don’t know, 20 rough songs recorded right before this [pandemic] hit and it just totally put the brakes on it.” That said, the guitarist revealed that he was traveling to Atlanta with plans to try to work with his bandmates finishing a few things they had previously started.

“I’ve definitely been writing like a madman, like crazy. It’s different than Emperor of Sand. There’s definitely a vibe going on. I don’t know how to describe it,” said Kelliher of their current music. “The new record, the stuff I’ve written, it’s not quite as notey as [Emperor of Sand], but it’s definitely got a more like Neurosis heaviness, [with] simplified guitar parts. And Brann [Dailor] … he always demos most of the vocal ideas cause he always has melodies and stuff like that… and he’s been singing on a lot of it, at least for demo purposes. The vocals are kind of like a ‘Asleep in the Deep’ style, kind of Radiohead-ish almost, like real melodic, a lot of vocal harmonies.”

But for those trying to glean some idea about the direction from his description, Kelliher warns, “We still don’t have all of Brent [Hinds]‘ songs in there yet and there’s still a lot of time for that stuff to change and to morph into other stuff.”