Mastodon drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor had a chat with Jose Mangin of SiriusXM‘s ‘Liquid Metal‘ and had some interesting news to share. On the bands third Grammy loss and metal being nominated at all, he offered:
“Awards for metal bands, I don’t know… as far as the Grammys are concerned, it’s always a hope that your band that you’re championing is gonna take it home and it’s almost like, Oh they let us in? I can’t believe it. They let heavy metal be there in the first place, it seems like a triumph I guess because it just feels so far off the radar.
When you’re making heavy metal music and existing inside the heavy metal community the Grammys are kind of something that’s not really on your radar. So when a heavy metal band gets nominated for a Grammy it’s more of a surprise than anything else, you know? I think the reason why they had to instate a heavy metal award in the first place was because of the popularity of Metallica basically.”
“It’s amazing, it’s crazy. The Grammy awards were the furthest thing from my mind when I started making music. Heavy music, especially when I first started out playing clubs and stuff in the early ’90s, that was the furthest thing. First of all the furthest thing was maybe being on a major label someday. We were just making some pretty bizarre music, so I just never really thought of it. So when we first got nominated in 2006 or 2007 it was pretty shocking. None of us thought it was an option, so when we got told we were just maybe a little confused, you know, why? Is this some kind of practical joke? But yeah, good times. It’s pretty insane.”
Dailor also hopes that the bands forthcoming ‘The Missing Link Tour‘ will result in some extensive collaborating onstage with co-headliners Clutch:
“Clutch was one of the first bands to take us out early on in our career and so I’m super excited that I’m getting back with those guys and touring and man, they’ve just become this like cult band that just is, I think, stronger than they’ve ever been. It’s just so killer, what a great live band. I’m hoping that we can combine forces and do some kind of cool thing together because I think they’re that kind of band, where they can jam.
We can kind of join each other on stage and do something cool, something special for the fans and stuff, so looking forward to that. So obviously if you’re a fan of Mastodon you know Neil, the singer sang on “Blood & Thunder,” as the voice of Ahab. So hopefully maybe a couple times during the tour he’ll be able to come up and join us for that, but I’d like to go beyond that and do something else, something cool. We need to brainstorm and see what we could do to make it super special.”
Dailor also has a new side project as well. The group is dubbed Arcadia and according to Dailor work on it is completed. When pressed for further details, he added:
“It’s not a supergroup or anything, it’s just me and a couple friends of mine from Atlanta here. I’m playing live drums on it and it’s got a bunch of dark, heavy Moog stuff, so it’s pretty cool. I’m doing some singing on it as well. I think we’ll probably release a song in the next couple weeks.”
For more from the chat head over to Revolvermag.com, who transcribed the whole thing.
