Mastodon is currently touring Europe as a three-piece, with guitarist Bill Kelliher hospitalized in London. The band was touring as part of the European Unholy Alliance Chapter 3 tour. Both Kelliher and doctors are hopeful that hell be able to rejoin the band for their headlining tour of Europe starting November 30 in Holland. At press time there was no word as to what ails Kelliher.
Mastodon is touring after working in Atlanta on their new album
Crack The Skye. After playing new songs at Bonnaroo, and the subsequent unauthorized distribution of those songs which were still evolving at the time, don't look for the band to play any new material. Drummer
Brann talked about the lessons learned by playing early versions of
Crack The Skye songs at Bonnaroo.
"We didn't want them recorded, and they got recorded and they got put out there. It was kind of a big screw up, because it wasn't the mix we wanted. when people have heard songs over and over again, either recorded or seen us live before and they see something from a cameraphone or some kind of stream where maybe the mix isn't that great, they know what the song sounds like and they've heard it live, they'd be able to differentiate and be like, 'Well this doesn't sound that great, but it's just the mix. But if you've never heard something before at all and then you're watching this brand new song you've never heard before and that's the way it's first presented to you it can be a little misleading. So we decided to button those up and not play them live again although people are listening to them, and hopefully when they get the record they'll go, 'Oh I see, I see what's going on there and it sounds a lot better on the record,' and hopefully when they come see us live we can get it up to snuff."
Mastodon's Crack The Skye was produced by Brendan O'Brien, and it's set for release in early 2009.
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Mastodon On New Songs Recorded At Bonnaroo
