Mastodon’s Brent Hinds didn’t pull any punches when bringing up a few past tours he “didn’t want to do.” The singer-guitarist particularly didn’t enjoy playing before Disturbed on the inaugural Mayhem Festival tour in 2008.
During an appearance on Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta’s podcast, Hinds was asked if there were any bucket-list bands he’d like to tour with. Instead, he started naming bands with whom he regretted sharing a bill.
“I did a lot of tours I didn’t want to do, though, like Disturbed and all that Mayhem stupid bullshit,” remarked Hinds, before using what could be deemed an offensive slur to describe the experience: “Gay ass shit.” He continued, “You gotta f**kin’ open up for Disturbed. You gotta play to people that like Disturbed.”
Asked about playing in front of Disturbed fans, Hinds continued, “It was the Mayhem Fest, you know, just a f**kin’ bunch of drunk Americans. They’re receptive to anything, I imagine. There’s tons of tours I want to do, but there’s most tours … our first tour for Relapse was with Dying Fetus and some other f**king band. It was horrible. I didn’t want to do that tour.”
Update, November 5th: Mastodon’s Brann Dailor has apologized on behalf of the band for Hinds’ use of a homophobic slur. Dailor also insisted that the band has “no ill will towards Disturbed.” See his full apology here.
Several years back, Hinds made headlines when he apparently told Guitar Player, “I f**king hate heavy metal,” despite being in one of the most acclaimed metal bands. He later clarified, “I said, ‘I f**king hate most heavy metal,’ is what I said. I don’t like a lot of it. There’s a lot of cookie-cutter bullshit out there, in my opinion, and I don’t like it. So I was just being honest. And they just took the ‘a lot’ out and just put ‘Brent Hinds hates metal.’”
Elsewhere in the Jasta podcast, Hinds confirmed that he was working on a new project with High on Fire frontman Matt Pike, saying, “I wrote way more songs that I chose not to put on the [new Mastodon] album because me and Matt Pike are starting a band together and we’re gonna work an album up and I’m gonna use a lot of that stuff for that. I kinda held back on purpose.”
Mastodon just released their eighth album, Hushed and Grim. The band will embark on a co-headlining US tour with Opeth, with support from Zeal & Ardor. We assume Hinds is on board with this bill, as it’s one helluva lineup. Tickets for the outing, which kicks off November 16th, are available via Ticketmaster.
Watch Brent Hinds’ appearance on The Jasta Show below, followed by Heavy Consequence‘s own recent interview with Mastodon singer-bassist Troy Sanders.
