TROUBLE IN MASTODON PARADISE? BRENT HINDS STORMS OFF STAGE IN OAKLAND
According to a couple of eyewitness accounts the latest trouble in the Mastodon camp has been caused not by ailing (but recently recovered!) guitarist Bill Kelliher, but by the Tasmanian devil himself, Brent Hinds. Seems that Hinds sabotaged the band’s performance in Oakland, CA over the weekend by appearing to be incredibly intoxicated (shocker), fucking up songs intentionally, and eventually storming off the stage leaving the rest of the band stranded. I’ll let MS Maniac “The Big Chazboski” take it from here:
Brent seemed off from the beginning, staggering a bit and not stepping up to sing his lines. I’m pretty sure he damn near collapsed at least once. Troy once ran to the mic, nearly pushing Brent over, in an effort to sing Brent’s lines. Brent continued to throw in wild solos where there should be words, throwing his guitar around and running off stage.While there seemed to be major technical issues, mostly with his monitor from what I could tell, he became less and less involved in the performance to the point where he even stopped playing and simply yelled in to the mic something around the lines of “I love heavy metal…..No I don’t.” Even more telling, he managed to screw up the intro to a song (that I can’t remember right now) to the point where Brann was looking through his cymbals in hopes of figuring out what was happening. He eventually completely lost his composure, throwing down a mic stand and storming off stage.
After roughly a 20 minute delay consisting of the keyboard player playing the same three notes for 10 minutes, and then realizing issues and perhaps showing more professionalism than I thought possible for a stand-in, started changing things up, trying different chords and rhythms, anything to try to keep the crowd from losing their interest completely. The band finally re-took the stake, sans Brent, thanked the audience for being there, and asked if we wanted one more. Bringing out another mic stand, Bill sang backups to “Blood and Thunder” and gracefully let the show die out into the night with no trace of Brent.
According to another source, a similar thing happened at the band’s New England Metal & Hardcore Festival performance in Worcester, MA last month. We’ve heard plenty of stories of Brent’s drunken antics — and we’ve even bore witness to them ourselves — but this is one of the most unprofessional displays I can recall. So your monitor mix sucks and you’re having a hard time hearing yourself; it sucks, but you work through it and play the fucking show instead of throwing a hissy fit about it. It’s rock and roll, and the show must go on. Mastodon, a band that toured basements and VFW halls for years before hitting it big — without a monitor anywhere to be seen — should know this better than anyone. Give the fans what they paid for instead of acting like a prima donna and storming off stage. I feel bad for the other guys in the band, especially Kelliher, who battled a serious medical condition (confirmed by Metal Insider to be pancreatitis) and came back to the tour in spite of still probably not feeling too hot.
If anyone has additional information about Hinds, Mastodon, or his status with the band, kindly let us know.
-VN
