MASTODON released "Marrow Deep" on August 28 via Loma Vista Recordings, and drummer and vocalist Brann Dailor has now explained where the title came from. It is not a metaphor about heaviness.
Asked about it by iHeartRadio Canada's JD Lewis, Dailor traced the phrase to two losses. "The marrow deep, it's as deep as you can get into a relationship. So, first and foremost my mother, but then a brother of 25 years," he said. "And when you kind of go deep into writing deeply emotional music with other people and you sort of bare your soul with them and have that primitive, ritualistic… You kind of tap into the children that still kind of live inside you. That's, I feel, as deep as you can get into a relationship."
He drew a line between friendship and the thing that grows out of making music together. "There's something about creating art with another person that, for me, elevates a friendship past the normal hanging-out-and-helping-me-move friendship levels," he said. "For me, life is about the relationships that you have and the relationships that you make. And both those relationships are the deepest, marrow deep, and so that was what I felt should be the name of the record."
The brother of 25 years is Brent Hinds, fired from MASTODON in March 2025 and killed in a motorcycle accident five months later. Dailor's mother, Michele Lawrence, died in February 2025. On SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk" earlier this month, Dailor confirmed both deaths are the thematic core of the album, and described a band that went into the studio roughly a week after losing Hinds and was not sure it should.
"We would take all the songs and all the lyrics back if we could have our people back, but that's not the situation," he said. "It ended up being exactly what we needed to kind of go in there and lean on each other and just dig in on these songs."
"Marrow Deep" is MASTODON's first full-length without Hinds and the first to feature guitarist Nick Johnston, alongside significant contributions from keyboardist João Nogueira. The band co-produced it at their own West End Sound in Atlanta with Patrik Berger and Kurt Ballou, with Andrew Scheps mixing. The second single, "Snakes For Dinner", features QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE's Josh Homme, who last appeared on a MASTODON record on 2006's "Colony Of Birchmen".
Dailor, Troy Sanders and Bill Kelliher also addressed Hinds' death directly in a documentary, "The Mastodon In The Room", made because they wanted fans to hear the story from them. The band open "The Poisonous Weapons Tour" on September 16 in Orlando with DEAFHEAVEN and ALCEST, closing October 24 at Sick New World Dallas.