Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher has confirmed in a recent interview that current touring guitarist Nick Johnston will be contributing to their next album.
Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher has confirmed that the band have slowly been chipping away on a new record, and has been working on material for a follow-up to 2021’s Hushed And Grim. But, as the band would admit, it’s been a tough process.
It’s safe to say 2025 has been a tough year for the band. In March this year, the band would part ways with long-time member and guitarist Brent Hinds. Mastodon would then recruit Canadian guitarist Nick Johnston to fill Hinds’ duties for the tour, though they have yet to announce him as an official member.
While at the time they shared that the split was amicable, Hinds would later contradict this statement sharing that he was instead fired.
In August, Hinds would tragically pass away after a car collided with his Harley-Davidson motorcycle late at night. In honour of their former member, all members of Mastodon would join a memorial walk for the guitarist in Atlanta.
Still, the band have been persevering, fulfilling their current tour dates while working on new material.
Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher would share in an interview with Sixty Scales And The Truth that the band have been working on new material while on the road, and has even been enlisting the help of Johnston to bounce ideas off of.
“Well, we’re kind of still in the writing process. Honestly, I’ve been writing for the new record since Hushed And Grim. Even before Hushed And Grim was finished, I still had extra songs, and then I just keep writing more and more and more. So now we’ve got, like, 20-some ideas. ‘Cause I own a studio as well – not just the one in my basement, but I have a proper studio.
“So we’ll demo the stuff at my house and we bring it to my studio with my engineer, and then we bring in Nick and João [‘Rasta’ Nogueira], the keyboard player, and we start jamming the songs and say, ‘You wanna add something? Please add whatever you want in here.’”
Kelliher did reveal that it has been a slow process given the impact Hinds’ departure from the band and tragic passing had on them, followed by their extensive tour schedule.
“It’s only been a slow kind of process because you take one song a day and you’ve got 20 songs, it’s taken 20 days and we’ve been touring and we’ve been busy. We’re in a good place, though. I feel like the stuff that I’ve written, mostly Brann and me, it’s really good.”
“It still needs the touch of the other guys, but there’s also these whole new songs that Nick is bringing in, like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this whole song.’ I’m, like, ‘Okay, cool. This is great.’ So it’s a combination of both. It won’t be until the next record, after this one, I think, where it really will be more of kind of more Nick being in there. He’s gonna be in the new record, for sure, yes. But he’s writing like crazy. I’m writing like crazy.”
“It’s like a race. I don’t know – not a race, and not a competition either – but we’re just so full of energy. We just don’t wanna get lost. I’m, like, Let’s concentrate on the songs that we have that we had before Nick joined and get those out with their help.’ And then it’ll be more of a cohesive, like, ‘Oh, this is definitely… Part A is Nick and part B is Bill and part C is Brann and part D is Troy.’ You know what I mean? It’s a little lopsided still, because he’s only just joined the band. But it’s still gonna be fucking awesome. I’m so excited. Everything that we’ve been demoing is incredible.”
Despite the extraneous challenges impacting the creative process for the new record, Kellihan has shared that since Hinds had left, the band felt like they had the opportunity to go whichever direction they wanted.
“I just feel like we’ve been given a booster shot of adrenaline, like, ‘Kaboom!’ It’s kind of a clean slate. Now we can really open our minds and really just kind of write whatever we feel like writing without worrying about what another person’s gonna think. Because that was a real challenge for a long time, and now I feel like it’s just like a new, fresh start. It’s the easiest way to put it.”
You can watch Bill Keliher’s full interview with Sixty Scales and the Truth below.
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