Mastodon reflect on Brent Hinds’ death in candid new video: “I thought there’d be that turnaround where we’d meet, apologise, hug and say, ‘I love you’”
Mastodon have shared a new video reflecting on the loss of co-founding guitarist Brent Hinds, revealing they always believed the band would eventually reconcile before his death.
Hinds departed Mastodon in March 2025 after 25 years with the band. Five months later, he died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 51. Since then, the band has continued with touring guitarist Nick Johnston, who is also expected to appear on Mastodon’s upcoming studio album.
READ MORE: Hear one of the “last guitar solos” Brent Hinds recorded on Marcus King’s new track: “He managed to do 278 takes before landing on the one he liked best”
Titled The Mastodon in the Room, the 35-minute video sees Troy Sanders, Bill Kelliher and Brann Dailor address Hinds’ departure and death publicly for the first time.
“As we enter a new chapter of Mastodon we want to do this the right way and talk about Brent,” the video’s description reads. “We’ve all seen the clips, headlines and speculations, but we haven’t told our story in our own words about our 25 year relationship.”
“It isn’t easy to talk about Brent, he was our family, someone we all loved wholeheartedly. He was a wild man, our wild man and that came with some challenges. Both things are true and we aren’t interested in chasing one truth over the other. Losing him has meant sitting with a type of grief we never expected. No more hugs, no more high fives, no more disagreements, no more making up. That part has been hard, it’s real.”
Opening the discussion, drummer Brann Dailor admits he initially wasn’t ready to speak publicly after Hinds’ death.
“I wasn’t ready to address it. I wasn’t ready to talk about it, I didn’t even know what happened,” he says. “And to the fans, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be more for them when that happened because I couldn’t for myself. I’m still unpacking it.”
The band also revisits some of its defining moments with Hinds, including the guitarist’s 2007 head injury after a drunken altercation that left him in a coma.
“We thought the band was over,” recalls Bill Kelliher.
But despite fearing the worst, Kelliher says Hinds returned with a fresh burst of creativity: “He was really fucked up for a long time… But then there was the other side of the coin where we got back home and actually went to go see him and he was playing acoustic guitar a lot. He was like, ‘I wrote all these songs’… Then Crack the Skye happened.”
The conversation then turns to Hinds’ final years in Mastodon, with the trio describing increasing struggles with alcohol, declining morale and increasingly inconsistent live performances.
“I could see the disconnect happening and the enthusiasm getting less and less, overall camaraderie as a four-piece dwindling,” Sanders says. “It became quite obvious at the time, the onstage energy would just be hit or miss.”
According to Sanders, those issues reached a breaking point during the Hushed and Grim era.
“It has always been ups and downs for the 25 years of our band, but I think it was at its peak unfortunately during these past five years.”
He says the band repeatedly tried to address the situation through sober, face-to-face conversations before ultimately concluding nothing was changing.
“We knew in our hearts that this was never going to change. I cannot tell you how many heart-to-hearts that the three of us had, daytime, sober, as a four-piece, pleading to someone that you’ve been with for the bulk of your life to listen to us. It got to the point where the shows were declining in the live environment, and we were exhausted, exhausted at throwing all this love at something that straight up was not listening or not caring.”
Kelliher adds, “You’re only as strong as your weakest link. The three of us could be out there practicing all day and rehearsing and we’d go out there, and we would rely on him, and it was killing us, killing all of us.”
Sanders also recalls the last time the four founding members were together. During a band meeting, he read a letter outlining his concerns with the band’s future, but Hinds stood up and walked out before he had finished.
“And that’s the last time I ever saw him again,” Sanders says.
He adds that he’d believed at the time there would eventually be a chance to make things right.
“I thought there’d be that turnaround where we’d meet, apologise, hug and say, ‘I love you.’ I didn’t know when, but I knew it would happen. And I was fucking wrong.”
“We all thought that,” says Dailor.
Watch The Mastodon in the Room in full below.
The post Mastodon reflect on Brent Hinds’ death in candid new video: “I thought there’d be that turnaround where we’d meet, apologise, hug and say, ‘I love you’” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
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