Mastodon Details Brent Hinds' Addiction Struggles in New Video
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- Mastodon released a 36-minute video, "The Mastodon in the Room," with surviving founders Troy Sanders, Bill Kelliher, and Brann Dailor reflecting on late guitarist Brent Hinds' struggles with addiction and mental health.
- Brent Hinds made headlines in 2007 after clashing with System of a Down's Shavo Odadjian at the VMAs; a police report named him the aggressor, leaving him with a broken nose, two black eyes, and a brain hemorrhage.
- Troy Sanders described reading Hinds a letter of grievances at a band meeting — Hinds walked out mid-reading, and that was the last time Sanders ever saw him.
- Brann Dailor compared the band’s cycle of conflict with Hinds followed by "redemption shows" to a "battered housewife" dynamic, saying the trio was "exhausted" pouring love into someone who "was not listening or not caring."
- Nick Johnston replaced Hinds as Mastodon’s lead guitarist, and the band finished recording their ninth studio album in May — a record Hinds did not contribute to.
- Dailor told Blabbermouth the album was "a hard record to make," citing his own mother’s death, the Hinds turmoil, and Hinds' motorcycle death as overlapping emotional burdens during sessions.
Why it matters: The 36-minute video and the upcoming ninth album both arrive as first-of-their-kind artifacts for Mastodon — the band’s first releases without founding guitarist Brent Hinds, who also never participated in recording. Dailor's framing of the sessions as shaped by his mother's death, the Hinds fallout, and Hinds' death signals the record will land as the group's most emotionally loaded work to date.
