Troy Sanders Says Mastodon Will Work on a New Album Later This Year, Maybe
In the ongoing game of “what have you done for me lately but also let’s revel in nostalgia,” Mastodon fans will be pumped to know that the band plans to write a new album this coming fall just as soon as they’re done touring the 10th anniversary of Crack the Skye. That tour, of course, will also feature Coheed & Cambria and Every Time I Die, and MetalSucks is giving away tickets to every stop of it.
In a new interview with Consequence of Sound, bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders said he doesn’t want to bank too heavily on nostalgia despite the band’s upcoming tour:
“I’m in Atlanta right now, and we’re having band practice and that’s what we’re doing today is we’re digging in to recondition ourselves on some of the songs that we haven’t played in 10 years. So it’s a good challenge. It’s nice to dig back and play songs that we’ve written and have just overlooked over the past 10 years of setlists. We’re not trying to live in the past, but that record, Crack the Skye, is what really put us on the map as a band that was a little different than the others. We had the determination and the courage to dive into the personal storylines to create the narrative of Crack the Skye, and musically, we felt that that it was coming from a place that was deeper than anywhere we’d come from before.
So, combined, it just turned out to be a very successful record for us. It was obvious that we were connecting with people. It was very relatable, what we were talking about, and that’s when our fan base continued to grow and it just become very obvious in our eyes that were on the path to something good and wonderful. That was my longwinded point that we’re not trying to just live in the past. We’re just trying to do a few weeks of shows, just touching on that album and the power and beauty that it possessed.
In other words, this is probably a one-time affair. Elsewhere, Sanders gave an updated timeline on the band’s next album, which the band pushed back when the Coheed offer came in:
“Well that was the intention [to write now]. We just completed the European tour in February and months ago, it felt like that would be a good stopping point of the Emperor of Sand touring cycle. But then this opportunity came up to co-headline with Coheed, so we decided this would make sense and it would be the 10th anniversary of Crack the Skye, so we decided to take the summer tour. So, instead of writing a new album, instead of diving head first into new new material right now, we’ve kind of just been enjoying a little home time and then rehearsing a lot of old material for this set that we’re doing this summer. So, we don’t really talk about it or mark the calendar, but just knowing how our band’s operated for the past 19 years, once we recover and enjoy some home time after the summer tour, we’ll probably, all four of us, I imagine, will be very excited to dive head first into new material. And we never put timelines on us. We never put those restrictions on ourselves. We just want everyone to be excited about it. So it needs to come naturally. But I would imagine that we’ll work [on a new album] in the fall of this year.”
Elsewhere in the interview Sanders speaks on his other projects — Killer Be Killed and Gone is Gone — as well as Game of Thrones, how the tour with Coheed came to be and more. Read the full piece here.
MetalSucks is giving away tickets to every stop of Mastodon’s upcoming tour with Coheed & Cambria and Every Time I Die. Don’t snooze on it!
