BRENT HINDS & BILL KELLIHERofMASTODONon the cover of GUITAR EDGE MAGAZINE – Sep 2009On news stands nationally now.Digital version attached…

http://guitaredge.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54:ma

Written by Bob Gulla

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It’s bedlam backstage at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, Finland. Mastodon and Lamb of God have both finished their sets and are done for the evening. Metallica, the night’s headliners, just hit the stage, and the crowd’s going expectedly ape. Yet while there is, undeniably, a party going on in the venue proper, as Hetfield and Hammett lay down their majestic Death Magnetic riffs, there’s also a chaotic bash backstage, where the opening bands and their crews have run of the place. That can only mean one thing: trouble.

“Man, I so don’t want to be doing this interview right now,” admits Brent Hinds, clearly preoccupied and a little stressed, like a teen that wants to get to the party but his Mom won’t cough up the car keys. “I’ve been waitin’ all damn day to party with these guys, my bros Mark (Morton) and Willie (Adler) in Lamb of God. No offense, dude, but I mean, we’re in Finland! What the hell else are we supposed to do? Hold on a sec…”

Hinds puts down his cell phone and the background noise rises up. There are whoops and hollers, the kind you’d hear at a rodeo, including Hinds’ own. His interview had obviously come at a bad time, but then Hinds manages to uh, multitask. A good two minutes passes before he returns to the phone, apologizing, “Sorry, man, but I had to do that.” He remained vague about what that was, though his voice had slowed somewhat and he seemed more relaxed. “Mark and Willie tell me you and the mag are super cool, so let’s do this. We can do this!”

To ease the pain of his interview, I explain that we’ll be talking about guitar playing, his favorite subject, hands-down. “Dude, I can polish that turd all day long,” he says. “Right now, I feel like I can sell a Popsicle to an Eskimo. I’m livin’ the dream! Hell, I used to build houses every day, and now I’m onstage playing my guitar. My guitar is helping me build my own house.”

In Crack the Skye, Mastodon’s fourth album, the band has poured a fresh new slab foundation for that house, a monolithic ode to rock and roll, capped by a soaring spire that is as impressive to hear as it is difficult to comprehend.

The song cycle, an abstract ode to astral travel, is brainy and brawny all at once, intricate, but pulverizing and electric. It is the sound of a band stretching itself to the point of snapping, a game of “chicken” that ends not in a last-ditch avoidance to safety but in an explosive, head-on collision. Says Kelliher, “We wanted to make a prog record that sounded like it was from the ’70s but is actually from the future.”

At the core of this vintage futurism stand Hinds and Kelliher, whose dueling guitars wind around each other like a pair of poisonous snakes, twisting in tightly as each track spirals higher. Hinds leads the way in unorthodox fashion; he’s a hybrid player, combining fingerpicking techniques with traditional picking, a result of his education early on as a student of classical guitar. By his side, Kelliher observes, listens, and then complements his colleague, creating his own parallel path. “Brent’s a total shredder,” Bill says. “I try to keep shit down and leave it at that.”

Mastodon’s extraordinary finished product does not go unnoticed, in the metal community and way beyond. “When we first met Metallica in Portugal,” Kelliher recalls, “Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo walked up to me and said, ‘Dude, it’s really nice to meet you.’ And I’m like, ‘Nice to meet me?’ Seriously, I’m face to face with the metal gods of my life and they’re happy to meet me?

He continues, “Pepper Keenan of Down (and Corrosion of Conformity) came up to me one night after our show, punched me hard in the arm, and said, ‘Man, I just saw metal evolve before my very eyes!’ All of this is pretty damned flattering.”

Back in the late ’90s, when the band formed, Mastodon had somewhat milder ambitions. They were loud and proud, of course, bludgeoners primarily, with a moody, progressive aesthetic that set them apart. Then something strangely tragic happened. After they signed with Warner Brothers in 2006, and released and toured the Grammy-nominated Blood Mountain, Hinds suffered a traumatic head injury backstage at the MTV Video Music Awards. A fringe lunatic in the Wu Tang rap posse sucker punched Hinds and the blow put him in a coma. His brain had swelled so much from the impact that authorities notified his family, in case he didn’t come out of it.

But Hinds eventually emerged from that coma and was laid up for a few months. While home, he recuperated by resting, smoking pot, writing music, and playing the guitar. “I had to settle down, stop drinking, and sit around a lot,” says Hinds, “so the vibe was relaxed and melancholy.” While home convalescing, Hinds wrote the entirety of Crack the Skye on acoustic guitar.

At the same time, Kelliher, bassist Troy Sanders, and drummer Brann Dailor were in the band’s practice space writing Mastodon music of a different sort. “We were in Remission mode,” says Kelliher, referring to the band’s 2002 sledgehammer album, “and we were playing super-heavy rock; it was really complex, not all that melodic, and kind of a step back in time for Mastodon.”

When Hinds was well enough to leave the house, he brought his new stuff to the band’s space. “I was like, ‘Look, man, look what I write at home.’ When I saw that they had written a bunch of stuff, too, I told them, ‘My brain is in shambles, dudes. I can’t learn anything new right now.’ I just didn’t have it in me.”

After hearing it, the rest of the band embraced Hinds’s material, especially Kelliher, who had to deal with adding his own parts to an incredibly intricate design. “I didn’t want to screw with it at all at first,” he admits. “I needed to heavy

it up, but it was so beautiful. I doubled up on some parts and got my heavy rockage out. But you can’t have a really heavy record without quiet and clean stuff going on, too.”

The Mastodon guitar sound relies on that contradiction of terms: in order for something to be heavy, it must also be quiet. In order for it to sound intricate, it must have less complicated passages. To perpetuate that Mastodon mythology, Hinds refers to himself as “a laid-back blues and country player,” (to prove it, a banjo appears on “Divinations”), which contrasts with his partner’s style. Kelliher is unschooled in the best sense of the word, short on bookish knowledge of theory and scales, but long on energy, imagination, instinct, and sheer sonic will.

Bill Kelliher

“Bill is the most complex heavy music writer I’ve met,” says Hinds. “When he writes something, it can be difficult to learn, but, man, he’s all about melting faces; he’s a really fast, technical, mathy player. We have to meet in the middle.”

So that the two can coexist more peacefully within the creative confines of the band, Hinds has facilitated his partner’s learning curve by showing him a thing or two. The first thing Brent noticed about Bill, after the face-melting part, was that he downpicked everything he played. “I told him, ‘Dude, you are making your life so miserable. Look, you can go back and forth, up and down! You don’t have to go down all the time, silly!’ I was blown away by his skill, but I was also 100 percent positive that he couldn’t downpick what I was writing for the band.”

The upshot was, Hinds shared some playing tips with Kelliher, and vice versa. “I was forced to play a way I’d never played, too,” says Hinds. “That’s the crux of our relationship on guitar every time we play. The

instrument is in our hands from when we wake up till after the show, and that’s why we need to work together on all of this craziness.”

While the mind-blowing mosaic of riffs and rhythms on Crack the Skye may sound virtually impossible to play to the naked ear, Hinds takes it in stride. “It’s not really a challenge for me, man! I’m versed on my instrument,” he says, without sounding cocky. “I would never challenge myself to go in a direction where I’d be uncomfortable. All of this stuff came from inside of me, so it’s kind of hard to think of it as challenging. It’s just who I am and who we are.”

Plus, when it sounds too complicated, Hinds can always blame the drummer. A typical Mastodon track gallop across challenging soundscapes and through thickets of note clusters, transitions, and hard-to-finger chord progressions. “As a listener, it sounds wild,” says Hinds, “but it only sounds that way because of the way Brann plays drums. He can put a staccato beat to something, or some other kind of weirdness, and he really blows things up. But he’s also the guy that keeps track of everything.”

“Brann is a human metronome; it’s his life,” Kelliher adds. “There’s a lot of counting going on. Brann does all of this by the numbers. He holds the key here.”

Mastodon’s odd gear choices go hand-in-hand with their idiosyncratic musicianship. Bringing on Brendan O’Brien, with his passel of vintage equipment, to produce Crack the Skye only encouraged deeper gear indulgence. Before recording, O’Brien took them into his gear stockade and had the band pick out a truckload of vintage amps and guitars. In addition to his trusty 1980 Gibson Explorer, silverburst Gibson Flying V, and tobacco sunburst Les Paul Custom with white binding, Kelliher used a yellow Fender Stratocaster with a Bigsby, a Yamaha SBG300 with pearl inlay he really likes with hand-wound pick-ups and abalone binding, and a First Act custom 9-string silverburst DC Lola. “I used the First Act on ‘Ghost of Karelia’ because it has a great natural chorus effect.” Hinds also used his First Act custom, along with the axes he’s relied on since the beginning, a similar ’79 silverburst Gibson Flying V, a Les Paul goldtop, and a Martin D-15 acoustic.

The band also opted for less predictable amp-age to enhance those guitar sounds. “I used Brendan’s JCM800 2210s with an original 100-watt head and it rocked balls in the studio, and I also started using a 100-watt Marshall Kerry King JCM800,” says Kelliher. “They’re both so natural sounding with less distortion and more rock.”

Hinds leaned on his ’72 Fender Twin Reverb silverface head, which goes through a 2x15 silverface cab for the clean stuff. He also used two different Marshall heads—a ’78 JMP Mark II Lead Series 100-watt andJMP2203, modded with a 200-watt power section instead of the customary 100-watt version—through 4x12 cabs loaded with Celestion speakers to get a heavier, dirtier sound. “I put the 200-watt in there instead of the 100 to get more break up,” he says. “I hit a chord and it’s more naturally distorted without putting any effect on it.”

Lately, Hinds has taken to plugging a 1954 Mary Ford reissue Les Paul into that Fender Twin. “For a metal band to do that I think it’s cool as hell,” he says. “These are the tones that are relevant to my life. I don’t know the metal tones, man. The guitar doesn’t sound good to me when it’s too overdriven and crunchy, with all this extra crap on it. I want it barebones, with a spark from these old amps; something that gives you this wheeeeerrrrrrrr sound, and when you use the tremolo you can reach these notes you don’t expect.”

Brent Hinds

Speaking of “notes you don’t expect,” Hinds and Keliher don’t buy into mammoth-sized pedal boards; neither chooses to alter his sound much with pedals or effects. Kelliher opts for an Ibanez Tube King overdrive pedal, while Hinds uses something uniquely called a “Mastortion,” a custom pedal that, he says, “If you misuse it, it blows the head right off my stack.” Hinds has also been known to stomp on an Ibanez Tube Screamer TS-9, a Boss DD-6 Digital Delay, a Boss GE-7 Equalizer, and a Boss TU-2 Tuner.

“Like I said, I like to stay in my comfort zone, which is different from anybody else’s comfort zone. In another world, I’d like to be a guy like Omar Rodriquez-Lopez (Mars Volta/At the Drive-In) who uses a lot of effects and switches, but I don’t have the patience for it like he does.”

The borderline insane work of Mars Volta’s Lopez is one name that comes up a lot in discussion with Hinds. In fact, when he’s not hanging with the band, he surrounds himself with a small cadre of players he respects. These guitarists include Ben Weinman from the Dillinger Escape Plan, Mark Morton of Lamb of God, Adam Jones from Tool, Kurt Ballou from Converge, High on Fire’s Matt Pike, and a few others.

“When I’m not playing guitar, I’m talking about guitar,” says Brent. “I hang out with these guys because they inspire me as a player. They have ambition and integrity, and I feel like a sponge when I play with them.”

Matt Heafy of metal gods Trivium is another talent Hinds finds inspiring. “Matt tried to teach me something recently that he learned from [Dream Theater guitarist] John Petrucci. He showed me this really crazy thing, but I was like, ‘What the hell did you just do? Show it to me again.’ It was so badass that I didn’t get it at all, but I liked it enough to interpret it in my own way. Now it’s kind of mine.”

It’s obvious in speaking with Hinds and Kelliher that guitar playing gets them really excited. Their excitement rubs off on their audiences, and they get lots of younger guitarists clamoring for advice. “When someone wants some advice about playing the guitar,” Brent explains, “I tell them, ‘You gotta get your head out of your ass, clean the crap off of it, and just play the damn guitar!” The celebratory ruckus in the background rises up again and Hinds has to shout to hear himself over the noise. “IT’S ALL ABOUT AMBITION! IF YOU DON’T WANT IT BAD ENOUGH, YOU AIN’T GONNA GET IT! AND IF YOU WANT IT, YOU’VE GOT TO PLAY THE GUITAR A LOT IN ORDER TO BE GOOD!”

MASTO-CLASS Guitarists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher were kind enough to provide a brief glimpse inside a few of the finger-twisting riffs on Crack the Skye.

“Divinations” (0:20-0:34): BH: This riff is my tribute to Omar Lopez of Mars Volta; he’s my favorite guitar player, and his work inspires me a lot. I’m a stoner, and I sit around with the guitar a lot and think of chords. I was listening to Lopez when this one came up. Drummer Brann Dailor came up with the melody.

BK: Brent is so much different than me as a player. He’s more of a fingerpicking guy. He showed me this riff, and I had to think of something to play under it that was more rhythmic and still a harmonized part. To this day, I can barely play this sucker. It’s the hardest thing I do every night.

“Quintessence” (verse riff starting at 0:16) BH: I wrote this while hanging out with Ben Weinman of Dillinger Escape Plan, who is one of the craziest guitar players in the world. I wrote this riff and was gonna give it to him, but I decided it was pretty damn cool so I kept it for myself. Honestly, it sounds difficult, but it’s really easy to play if you can do the hybrid picking. If you tried to pick it all it would be hard.

BK: Brent played this thing for me, and I wrote the riff under it which is what he’s singing, the vocal melody. So he starts singing over it, and then he says, “I can’t play the riff and sing at the same time. You have to play it,” and I’m like, “Damn!” I practiced it for days before I got it down.

“Ghost Of Karelia” (verse riff starting at 0:33) BK: Our bassist, Troy [Sanders], was writing this thing, and I came in and picked up the guitar and started writing the opening riff over what he was playing. Then Brent came in and says, “What’s going on?” And he starts playing something over it and it became a total band collaboration song. We all enhanced it in our own ways.

 

Words and Music by Brann Dailor, William Hinds, William Kelliher and Troy SandersCopyright (c) 2009 Chrysalis Songs and Trampled Under Hoof Music Inc.

All Rights Administered by Chrysalis SongsAll Rights Reserved Used by Permission

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

Rick GershonWarner Bros. Records/Publicity3300 Warner BlvdBurbank, CA. 91505818-953-3473rick.gershon@wbr.com