Interview with Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher

With a sound as big as the extinct animal they’re named after, Atlanta, Ga., metal band Mastodon has risen to be one of the best acts to see live. On October 30 they will be headlining a hell of a bill at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, including French metal monsters Gojira and Norwegian hardcore punks Kvelertak, that anyone who likes it loud shouldn’t miss. Recently I had the chance to talk to Mastodon’s rhythm guitarist, Bill Kelliher, about the band’s current tour, the joys of twerking, his obsession with Star Wars and many other things.

Rob Duguay: On the night before Halloween, Mastodon will be rolling through Lupo’s with two incredible bands: Gojira and Kvelertak. The lineup is a total dream for metalheads all over Providence and Mastodon will be on tour with them. How did this whole tour come about? Who contacted who? Did you guys all know each other beforehand?

Bill Kelliher: Well, we met the guys in Gojira years ago. I was always pretty intrigued by their music and they seem to be getting a lot of popularity. With Kvelertak, I’ve been a big fan ever since we toured with Baroness and John Baizley from that band that did the artwork for Kvelertak’s first album, and he told me I had to listen to them. I have a long history of listening to punk rock with my records and whatnot from years ago, so when I heard Kvelertak for the first time I thought they were fucking amazing with three guitar players. We did The Big Day Out in Australia a couple years ago, and both Kvelertak and Gojira were a part of that. We had a couple off-dates that we needed to fill in with our own shows we had going on, so we had those guys open up for us and I said to myself, “Man, this would be a knock-out-of-the-fucking-park to do a tour like this back in the States.” It took a few years, but all the stars aligned and we were able to do it a couple months back and now we’re doing it again so I’m looking forward to it.

RD: I’m looking forward to it as well; when everything comes together it can be a beautiful thing. This past June Mastodon put out their sixth studio album called Once More ‘Round The Sun. There’s one notable track that’s been all over the internet lately, “The Motherload.” The music video for it features a whole bunch of twerking being done by female dancers. It’s not something you’d expect to see in a music video from a heavy metal band. Who came up with the idea to have this black metal dark ceremony mixed with a bunch of girls twerking in front of you guys playing?

BK: Our drummer Brann [Dailor] brought the idea; he had kind of a bigger perspective on it. When you come to the table to do a video you get a long ass story and you only have 3 minutes to tell it so you gotta cut it up. At first we were just talking about having us at a bar or a restaurant drinking beers and girls were twerking all over the place and going crazy. Then Brann was like,”Well, I think it would make more of an impact if we started the video out where it looks like an old school metal video, stereotypical boring ass shit where’s there some weird looking dude with facepaint on in some old decrepit building and then have these twerkers come out of nowhere and start shaking their asses.” It just kind of played out that way. We’re not making fun of tweaking; it’s like an art form, really. I’ve never actually seen it in person until we did the video, so it was pretty interesting stuff.

RD: It must have been quite the experience. You had a few people from Adult Swim involved with the video, right?

BK: Yea, they definitely helped out with the video for sure. They’re in Atlanta and we’re in Atlanta and there’s a lot of twerking going on there with the hip-hop scene, so we didn’t see a big deal with it. We think it’s pretty normal.

RD: You probably see it there every time you go out.

BK: Pretty much.

RD: One very interesting thing about you is that you’re a Star Wars fanatic. You even named your son Harrison after Harrison Ford. A sequel trilogy of the Star Wars saga will be in theaters next year with J.J. Abrams directing Episode VII. As a devoted fan of the film franchise, do you support the idea of having a sequel trilogy or are you against it?

BK: I’m actually looking forward to it. I think it’s going to be really good. I try to tell people that when Star Wars first came out, I was a 6- or 7-year-old kid so of course it blew me away. Of course all of us from that generation who’ve grown up now, saw The Phantom Menace and all that shit that was terrible. It’s terrible no matter what, but you also have to remember that we’re putting so much critiquing on this movie because we’ve grown up now and we’re not 6- or 7-years-old anymore seeing it for the first time. My kids saw The Phantom Menace and the prequel and it probably moved them, they probably thought it was awesome to see how Darth Vader became Darth Vader and Yoda and all that stuff. There are bits that are confusing for me, though, with too many characters and a very wishy-washy story, but they’re not really making the movie for the 40- or 50-year-old people who saw it when they were kids. It’s more about for the children, so it’s probably gonna be a geared toward them — especially with Disney — but I hope they put a dark twist on it like in the original film.

RD: It should be interesting to see what they do with it, especially with the new actors and characters that’ll be in the upcoming stuff. Before you were in Mastodon, you were in many other bands including Today Is The Day and Lethargy. What makes playing in Mastodon different than the bands you’ve played with in the past?

BK: Lethargy for me was really fun. It was one of those things where I played in some local bands and Lethargy lost one of their guitar players and they asked me if I wanted to try out. I was like, “Yea, sure,” knowing I would never be able to play that stuff due to it being super technical and really fast. I’ve never really played like that so it was a surprise when I ended up fitting in with those dudes and bringing something to the table. It was a learning experience for me and it definitely really fun. It wasn’t my band from the beginning, so it was one of those things where it felt kind of sterile. The music is great and it was a really awesome band that was fun to play in, but it wasn’t quite my cup of tea. I’ve always been searching for that perfect blend of technology in music and having rock ‘n’ soul as well, something that doesn’t have to be played the exact same way every time. It can bend a little bit, it can give and that’s what Mastodon is to me. It’s my baby, it’s something I was a part of creating from the very beginning. In Today Is The Day, I was playing bass and it was kind of a stepping stone in between bands, giving me something to do because I was kind of moving back and forth between Atlanta and Rochester, NY, where Brann and I are from. Joining that band I felt like a hired gun, I didn’t feel like I had anything to do with the band. I felt like it was not for me and I needed to be in control of my artistic expression. That’s why we started Mastodon.

RD: There’s nothing wrong with doing your own thing and forging your own path. Heavy metal over the years has gotten to be very diverse. You have black metal, sludge metal, progressive metal, classical metal, speed metal, death metal, thrash metal and many others. You have all these bands that have different techniques, different styles, and they’re all very, very loud and very, very intense. Being a heavy metal musician who is in the thick of it, what do you think the future holds for heavy metal music?

BK: I don’t know. I feel semi-removed from it all. I’m out here playing with some of the best bands I think are out there with Kvelertak, Gojira and many others. I really think that it’s a melting pot of all different styles and that’s where everything is headed. When I hear a band I don’t automatically think that they’re death metal or it’s goth metal or it’s black metal or it’s doom metal or it’s stoner metal. All I hear is music so I try not to categorize it like that, but I also think that a lot of bands like Baroness, Kylesa, High On Fire and Iron Tusk do a lot of crossover stuff with different styles. I mean, who are we? We’ll play one heavy ass song and then we’ll write something that’s pretty and a little more jazzy. I think it’s more acceptable because we have tastes that are all over the board.

You can check out Bill Kelliher and the rest of Mastodon with Gojira and Kvelertak at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in Downtown Providence on October 30. It’s the best pre-Halloween party happening and I advise you show up early.

Mastodon’s Website: mastodonrocks.com