Mastodon Not Enrolling in Monsters University

Late last year, Mastodon announced that they were “contributing” a song to the soundtrack for the upcoming Disney/Pixar children’s film, Monsters University, and for reasons that seem in no way clear to me now, everyone (myself included) pretty much just assumed that they meant a new song.

Well, they didn’t.

From a press release regarding the film’s soundtrack:

“Faced with the question of what a sweet monster might listen to during a free moment, filmmakers decided to push the envelope. ‘There is a great moment in ‘Monsters University’ when we thought it would be funny if the tunes were some of the most intense heavy metal imaginable. Mastodon was the obvious choice. They show off an unexpected monstrous side for one of our great new characters.’

“They chose an existing song from the group called ‘Island.’”

The song won’t be on the movie’s officially-released sountrack, either — it will just appear in the film.

Now, this is obviously kind of a bummer, because it means we have to wait that much longer for some new Mastodon material. But the silver lining, as I see it, is this: “Island” is an awesome song from what some of us still consider to be Mastodon’s finest album (that would be Leviathan), a metric shit ton of children will still be exposed to metal — possibly for the first time — because of its inclusion in the flick, and, if Crack the Skye and The Hunter are any indication, it’s probably still much heavier than anything new the band would have composed in 2013. (And that’s to say nothing of the fact that Mastodon probably made a mint for the licensing deal.) In fact, it’s kinda crazy that a song with this much screaming is going to be in a goddamn Disney movie. So long as no crazy Mastodon fans go to the theater and expose themselves to a group of little kiddies, I’d say this is an all-around win.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6_pvBmrujFk

[via Metal Insider]