Mastodon To Start Work On Their New Album Next Month

Mastodon have revealed they plan on starting work on a new album as soon as next month, in the band’s own studio in Atlanta.

Speaking to Metal Sucks, guitarist Bill Kelliher revealed that while things aren’t quite fully nailed down, the rough plan is to start in November.

“That’s the idea,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that are up in the air right now, but that’s the idea. We’d like to start recording ASAP. Let’s do it when we want to do it, let’s do it at our own place where we feel comfortable and don’t have to travel anywhere to shack up in a hotel for a month or two when we’re recording. Just being comfortable is the key word.”

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The idea to build their own studio came after Bill began a rehearsal studio business, and realised the economics of a similar venture with recording would save somewhere in the region of A Shitload Of Money on making an album.

“If we have our own studio now, we don’t have to pay these exorbitant amounts of money to record there,” he explained. “A thousand bucks a day [to another studio]? Gimme a break. You’re never going see this money again, you’re throwing your money into an ad, which is your record, so that people come see you play the concert and buy your stuff. But if there’s no concert you’re just making this free ad that’s costing half a million dollars where people can just basically listen to as much as they want on Spotify and Apple Music and all that stuff. If it keeps going this way, bands are going to disappear because no one can afford to be out there spending that kind of money to make no money.”

Bill recently revealed how the effects of not being able to tour are hitting bands. With no gigs to earn money from, the band are currently on unemployment benefits to pay the bills.

“There’s no money coming in,” he explained. “There’s no big royalty cheques that just come in every month. And that’s the truth… because people don’t buy the music. I mean, there’s a little bit of residuals from publishing and stuff, but it’s peanuts. It’s nothing. It’s quarterly payouts of a couple thousand dollars, if we’re lucky. And it’s all taxable money, just like everybody else.

“Just say to yourself, ‘Imagine if you couldn’t work for over a year. I mean, I’m on unemployment. Because I own a few businesses – Mastodon is a business and we have employees – we’re all out of work. And we had the option to apply for unemployment; we pay into it [via tax], might as well use it if it’s there because if I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t have any income at all.”

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