Recorded a week after the death of former bandmate Brent Hinds, the Atlanta metal crew mines their grief for one of their most emotional albums
Listening to just a few minutes of Marrow Deep, Mastodon‘s tempestuous ninth album, it becomes clear quickly that they just don’t know how to feel anymore. The album is arriving roughly a year after the death of founding guitarist-vocalist Brent Hinds, whom they fired acrimoniously a few months earlier, as well as the death of drummer-vocalist Brann Dailor’s mother in February 2025. Writing an album under these circumstances wasn’t new to Mastodon.
All but a few of the group’s albums have found Atlanta-based headbangers in throes of grief: They mourned the 2018 death of manager Nick John on their most recent album, Hushed and Grim (2021), guitarist Bill Kelliher’s mom on Once More ‘Round the Sun (2014), Hinds’ brother who died in a hunting accident on The Hunter (2011), and the death by suicide of Dailor’s sister, when he was a teen, on both Crack the Skye (2009) and Remission (2002). Hinds died in a motorcycle accident about a week before the group entered the studio to record Marrow Deep.
So when vocalist-bassist Troy Sanders growls, “We don’t get over this,” on the album’s”In the Ruins,” true pain resounds in his voice. In some ways, Marrow Deep is Mastodon’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” a tribute to a bandmate who was crucial to their beginning but lost his way, as they recently explained eloquently in a video, as well as an acknowledgement of life’s frailty. When Dailor sings, “I saw your ghost again, followed by crushing feelings of regret,” to Hinds on “Ghost Again,” he sounds raw, and after a brief musical reprieve, the song congeals into the crunching, gnashing, chomping riffs that close it out. It’s heavy. It’s also weirdly emotional, at least for a metal album.
