Mastodon’s Brent Hinds on Infamous Quote About Hating Metal: “It Was Taken Out of Context”
As you may recall, Mastodon’s Brent Hinds got into a lil’ bit of hot water when, in 2015, he made this declaration during a Guitar Player interview with Michael Molenda:
“I never really liked heavy metal in the first place. I came from Alabama playing country music, surf rock, rockabilly, and stuff like that. I just went through a phase in my 20s where I thought it was rebellious to play heavy metal. And then I met Brann [Dailor, Mastodon drummer] and Bill [Kelliher], and they were really, really, really into heavy metal. And ever since then, I’ve been trying to get Mastodon to not be such a heavy metal band, because I f**king hate heavy metal, and I don’t want to be in a heavy metal band.”
Brann Dailor later tried to walk back Hinds’ comments during a Reddit AMA:
“Brent wasn’t exactly serious about that, he likes metal, but more importantly, he likes what he likes, he likes music, I don’t necessarily put music into genres for myself, I get the same feeling from Slayer that I get from Stevie Wonder. He doesn’t like certain types of metal, he digs the classic stuff, and Melvins, Neurosis, Etc…”
Now Metal Injection reports that, in a new interview with Eddie Winters, Hinds has seconded Dailor’s assertion, claiming that Guitar Player and Molenda outright misquoted him for the sake of “selling magazines”:
“[The Guitar Player quote] was taken out of context. I said ‘I fucking hate most heavy metal,’ is what I said. I don’t like a lot of it. There’s a lot of cookie-cutter bullshit out there, in my opinion, and I don’t like it. So I was just being honest. And they just took the ‘a lot’ out and just put ‘Brent Hinds hates metal … These guys, I mean, they need people to come by and visit their web site, and how are they gonna do that without taking people’s quotes out of context? They’ve gotta somehow sell magazines, so I can understand why they’re doing it. But just keep me out of it. I don’t really do that many interviews because of that kind of stuff.”
Hinds seems to be taking this fairly lightly, but to say a media outlet manipulated a quote to suit their own needs is actually a damning accusation. If I was Guitar Player and Molenda, I’d be digging up and releasing the audio recording of the interview right now to prove Hinds didn’t include the word “most” in his statement. I’ll be curious to see how Guitar Player responds.
