For more than two decades, Mastodon has turned tragedy into deeply felt musical inspiration. It’s been a recurring theme for the Atlanta progressive-metal band, who have faced terrible losses for much of their time together, including multiple deaths and other crises. The personal stakes couldn’t be more profound, which emerged again at Mastodon’s two-hour performance at the Hollywood Palladium on Saturday.
From behind the drum kit, Brann Dailor sang of losing one of their own, lead guitarist Brent Hinds, roaring into the mic: “I saw your ghost again / Visions of a future nonexistent … followed by crushing feelings of regret.”
The song was “Your Ghost Again,” from the band’s new album, “Marrow Deep,” and it closed with a supercharged riff as heavy as Slayer or Sabbath. It was an epic remembrance, with feelings complicated by the fact that Mastodon was estranged from Hinds at the time of his death at 51 from a motorcycle crash in 2025. While the band’s lyrics and muscular swirl of sounds did most of the talking at the concert, singer-bassist Troy Sanders greeted the crowd early in the set with an acknowledgment of the troubles they’ve seen, which also included the death of Dailor’s mother.
“Thank you for your patience and understanding,” Sanders said, “and giving us the time that we needed to navigate some dysfunction and some troubled waters to write the album we’re proud of.”
In an interview with The Times ahead of the album’s August release, Mastodon’s three surviving founding members — Dailor, Sanders and rhythm guitarist Bill Kelliher — reflected on the new songs, and their efforts to push past tragedy.
“It was obvious that the record was going to be about that,” said Dailor, sitting with the others in an upstairs loft at the Hollywood offices of the band’s label, Loma Vista. “Unfortunately, that’s been our MO for the last 15 to 20 years. We thought we were going to escape it and this new album and was going back to telling some fantastical story, with witches and Pegasus and whoever we could throw in the mix. But that wasn’t what fate had in mind.”
Making Hinds’ loss more intense and emotionally complicated was that the band had just fired him from Mastodon five months earlier. Hinds was a big, sometimes difficult personality, with an easy laugh and a large tribal tattoo across his face, plus a general unwillingness to compromise. He was bitter about the breakup and expressed those feelings online.
Built from heavy music of complexity and deep emotion, “Marrow Deep” is in part a document of the band in conflict and mourning for the man they’d spent two decades within a close creative brotherhood.
“There’s no skirting around it,” says singer-bassist Sanders of the album’s themes. “We’re processing this together.”
The album’s first single was “Your Ghost Again,” inspired by visions Dailor kept having in the studio, where he thought he saw Hinds in his usual spot on the far edge of the drummer’s peripheral vision. “I just kept seeing him. I kept hearing his necklaces. I kept hearing his voice out in the hallway,” Dailor recalls.
“I told the guys when we were sitting there, ‘Man, I keep seeing Brent. It’s really freaky.’ It gives you a little jolt, and then you’re reminded that they’re not coming back and it’s sad, you know?”
The relationship with Hinds was complicated, and much of the history behind the scenes was unknown even to devoted fans of the group. And as time went on, the others felt that Hinds prioritized Mastodon less and less. That sometimes led to tension and chaos even onstage. In 2025, after a performance at the Aftershock Festival in Sacramento, things came to a point where his bandmates needed some distance.
“His heart wasn’t in it, and he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t leave our lifestyle,” said Kelliher. “I called our management. I said, we need to make a decision and do this. It was hardest thing I had to do, but I felt like it was the right thing to do for all of us — for Brent too. Go do what you like to do because you obviously don’t like to do this.”
As that drama was unfolding, Dailor was already mourning the loss of his mother. The first lyrics written for the album by the drummer were for “Out Like a Lamb,” set to sounds tense and melancholy about the loss — which followed his mother’s lifetime of rheumatoid arthritis and many other health challenges.
“‘Therapeutic’ is a word that gets used a lot, but it’s really true — and this record for me more than ever, because I have a hard time processing emotions,” explained Sanders, bearded and graying in a Men at Work T-shirt. “When Brann and I were starting to write lyrics, it wasn’t fun. It’s a bum out. But after it was all said and done … I realize how important that was and how helpful it was for me personally, and the whole band.”
“Marrow Deep,” the band’s ninth studio album, reached No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Hard Rock Albums chart, and has been widely acclaimed critically. The Palladium performance was to a full house, with crowd surfers tumbling frequently into the photo pit.
At the concert, Mastodon also appeared as a band pushing past the tragedies, and was re-energized and refocused with a new lineup.
Stepping into the band’s lead guitarist role was Nick Johnston, a forceful presence delivering crisp musical phrases that could be fittingly elegant or snarling. In place of Hinds, he certainly faced the most scrutiny in the band’s first Los Angeles show since 2023, but he was cheerfully engaged and relaxed with the crowd.
Mastodon’s other newest member is keyboardist João Nogueira, a revelation on the album and at the Palladium, though he’s been a sideman to the band for years. Now a full member, he’s unleashed a new layer of invention, reflecting Mastodon’s obsession with a certain kind of mid-’70s prog rock.
The new album’s “Poisonous Weapons” began on Saturday with a keyboard interlude that was like an echo of the Age of Aquarius, easing into ethereal passages before the rest of the band erupted with a storm of heavy guitars. Another wild keyboard run was part of “Snakes For Dinner,” as Sanders led the crowd to clap along to Dailor’s thunderous drumbeat.
They were soon joined by John Baizley, singer-guitarist from the metal band Baroness, who remained for the rest of the concert to fill in on Hinds’ vocal parts on several songs, including “The Czar” and the set-closing “Blood and Thunder.”
By the time the night was over, and Dailor was alone out front saying his goodbyes and tossing drumsticks into the crowd, Mastodon showed it was still surviving and thriving.
“It’s very promising right now because we have five friends super-aligned with one another,” Sanders told The Times. “Everyone has the same desires, the same dedication. What a beautiful opportunity to just press the gas pedal further.”
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