MASTODON drummer and vocalist Brann Dailor and guitarist Bill Kelliher have reflected on what it means to keep performing songs written with former guitarist Brent Hinds, as the band prepares to release "Marrow Deep," its first full-length album since Hinds' departure, on August 28 via Loma Vista Recordings.
Hinds, who served as MASTODON's lead guitarist and vocalist for 26 years, parted ways with the band in March 2025. He died approximately five months later, in August 2025, in a motorcycle accident. Guitarist Nick Johnston has since stepped in to perform with the band's three surviving founding members — Dailor, Kelliher and bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders.
Speaking about continuing to play material Hinds helped create, Dailor said: "We wrote all these songs together...he wrote a lot of really incredible riffs," acknowledging the guitarist's lasting fingerprint on the band's catalog. Kelliher framed performing those songs as an act of preservation as much as performance: "When we play some of those songs, it's kind of keeping Brent's... This is his art."
Dailor also spoke candidly about how the band's ongoing work served as an emotional anchor in the aftermath of Hinds' death, saying: "The only thing that got me through all of it was this new record and MASTODON." His comments underscore the degree to which finishing "Marrow Deep" doubled as a means of processing the loss of a founding member and close collaborator of more than two decades.
"Marrow Deep" marks MASTODON's first album written and recorded entirely without Hinds, and stands as both a continuation of the band's three-decade run and a tribute to the guitarist's contributions to their sound. With Johnston now filling the touring guitar role, the band appears intent on carrying its catalog — and Hinds' place within it — forward rather than retreating from it, treating the new record as both a fresh chapter and an active act of remembrance.