'With everything I've ever done, I've always strived to be different. But I don't think any of it was completely on purpose," says Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor. "I think that with everybody playing together in this band, there's a lot of different influences. And when we're making our soup, it comes out like that.
"You don't really need Dailor to tell you that his heavy-as-shit Atlanta, Ga.-based quartet isn't your average underground metal band — "Crusher Destroyer," the leadoff track from their first full-length Remission, should explain things nicely. It's a two-minute blast of thrashy off-kilter rhythms, complex grindcore-inspired drumming, metallic guitar fills and throat-ripping vocals that none too subtly announces the group's intent to resist putting the same old elements together in the same old ways.
Another tip-off: Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher did time in legendary brutal-noise science project Today is the Day before moving to Atlanta and forming Mastodon with bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders and guitarist Brent Hinds. So is the fact that the fledgling band was immediately signed to extreme-music label Relapse, the imprint that brought you the likes of Neurosis, Coalesce and Dillinger Escape Plan. But the sum of Mastodon's parts is something altogether different than that of most math-metal merchants. Where plenty of experimental heavy acts, consciously or not, come across as inhuman or clinical, Mastodon incorporates more visceral, rough-edged facets of rock, punk and classic '70s and '80s British metal to produce an organic, even soulful vibe.
"I think the standards of music have been lowered drastically since the '80s, the Reagan era," says Dailor. "I want things to maybe head back to [that]. Maybe I'm romanticizing my past, but music just used to have a little more heart, you know what I mean?"
It's quite possible that the above statement might seem unexpected from the drummer in one of America's most adventurous and face-shattering new bands. But like many of the musicians currently mapping new territory in the metal landscape, Dailor is a music fan of immensely eclectic tastes. He cites everything from Stevie Wonder's 1972 gem Talking Book and David Bowie's albums of the same period to Thin Lizzy, John Coltrane and A Tribe Called Quest as favorites, and has little use for the outdated and narrow-minded prejudices often assigned to guys who play heavy music.
"I think there is a negative stereotype about metal that it's a bunch of dumb dudes that write this clunky, junky music and scream over the top of it. But every genre has some shining moment in it. There's something good somewhere in every kind of music," he says.
Even nü-metal?
"I'm frustrated that the average metal fan likes that," Dailor concedes, but adds, "the same bands that I trash every day and talk shit about, those bands could open the door for my band. So at least there's a representation of heavy bands on the radio. It's music that could get a kid intrigued, get 'em motivated to dig a little deeper."
Unlike several of new extreme music's most well-known names — not to mention their fans — Dailor and Mastodon have no qualms about looking out into the crowd at their shows and seeing Slipknot T-shirts alongside those of hipper, more sophisticated underground acts like Isis. The drummer gauges Mastodon's fan-base as a strangely disparate one that runs the gamut from old-schoolers who bought Iron Maiden's first record when it came out to the kind of horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing kids more readily associated with a Saves the Day show.
And the band likes it that way. Dailor stops well short of saying he thinks Mastodon could be as big as Bon Jovi, but does repeatedly refer to a refreshingly populist belief that music should be for everyone. And not just the everyone who happens to have the exact same tastes that the band, or the band's original core of fans, has.
He also tends to give the average listener far more credit than the industry at large has in years.
"We just kind of want to up the ante, because I don't think people are as dumb as most record labels and marketing companies think. They can handle changing time signatures. They used to all the time," Dailor says. "Yes used to pack stadiums. And Frank Zappa. He could never get even a small indie deal these days. It sucks."
What Mastodon shares with both the aforementioned artists is a deft knack for balancing complexity and experimentation with something catchy, intriguing, compelling or all of the above. Remission isn't exactly bristling with hooks in a pop or even vaguely melodic context. It is, however, full of engaging arrangement surprises which manage to be both weird and perfectly apt. The listener can dissect it and feel it at the same time; and by all rights, it should be a bit of a difficult listen. Yet it's not.
Dailor credits the careening songs' underlying cohesion to the perfect mix of arithmetic and alchemy.
"There has to be this magical moment that happens when you play the riff. I don't know, something happens and you know it's awesome. It's like a high almost … when it matches your vision of how this riff is supposed to sound, how this song is supposed to go," he says. "It's a frustrating couple of hours getting to that point, but once you get there, it's heaven."
And, he adds, there is one more key factor:
"No filler riffs. It's all gotta be awesome. Every single riff has to rule, and that's the end of the story."
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2003.