That Mastodon have been writing new material isn’t a surprise, the group have said as much in recent months. Drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor has spoken to WMMR about their progress with the effort, confirming that the songs left over from the “Once More ‘Round The Sun” that were originally planned for an EP have been brought into the fold on their next upcoming release:
“At the moment, it’s just a ton of riffs, and they’re kind of starting to form songs now, so we kind of have a… And we have some stuff that didn’t make the last record, and not because it wasn’t awesome, but it just didn’t fit the vibe of the stuff we had more of. And we were gonna do this winter EP thing, but that material’s kind of morphed into more than just that, so I think it’ll warrant a full album release.
So we have that stuff, and then we have a whole new crop of songs. We have a lot of material, so we have to whittle it down at the moment. And we’re still just kind of experimenting. We go over to Bill‘s basement and sit down there and riff out, and throw everything up against the wall and see what sticks.”
