{"id":878014,"date":"2026-08-31T08:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T08:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878014\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T08:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T08:28:09","slug":"mastodon-marrow-deep-album-review-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878014\/","title":{"rendered":"Mastodon: Marrow Deep Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

If they could\u2019ve, Mastodon<\/a> would\u2019ve played with Brent Hinds forever. When the sludge metal giants fired their troubled but brilliant guitarist in March 2025, it was the culmination of a long, doomed effort to pull him back from the edge\u2014to get him sober, to reengage him with his love of music, to help him move past his petty, self-sabotaging resentments. Even after the split, his bandmates hoped it would just be a temporary break. \u201cWe were certain that two months later, two years later, we were going to have the high five\u2014I\u2019m sorry, dude. I\u2019m sorry, too, man. I love you,\u201d bassist Troy Sanders told GQ<\/a> earlier this year. That never happened. Hinds died in a motorcycle crash in Atlanta on August 20, 2025. Two weeks later, Mastodon started recording their ninth album, Marrow Deep.<\/p>\n

Even more than most metal bands, Mastodon have long wrestled with personal tragedy and grief in their music. 2009\u2019s uncompromisingly progressive Crack the Skye<\/a> was inspired in part by the suicide of drummer Brann Dailor\u2019s sister, Skye, and its more streamlined follow-up, The Hunter<\/a>, found Hinds reckoning with the death of his brother. Emperor of Sand<\/a> spun an extended metaphor about cancer, which had just killed guitarist Bill Kelliher\u2019s mom. Marrow Deep was intended to deal with Dailor\u2019s mother\u2019s suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and her death at the end of 2024. By the time they entered the studio, it inevitably became about Hinds, too. The wild, untamed spark he once brought to Mastodon will be much missed, but his absence also means Marrow Deep finds the band as functional as they\u2019ve been in years. After the disappointment of 2021\u2019s bloated Hushed and Grim<\/a>, an album that Hinds barely contributed to, they sound like they\u2019re back on the right track.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll likely never again hear the roaring, rugged Mastodon of the band\u2019s first three albums\u2014Remission<\/a>, Leviathan<\/a>, and Blood Mountain<\/a>, as perfect a trilogy as there\u2019s ever been in heavy metal\u2014but Marrow Deep at least gestures toward some of that youthful energy. The album marks the recorded debuts of touring guitarist Nick Johnston and the band\u2019s first full-time keyboardist in Jo\u00e3o Nogueira, and both players seem to have provided an infusion of inspiration. Nogueira\u2019s keys are everywhere, adding a formidable melodic counterweight to Kelliher and Johnston\u2019s guitars. Dailor sounds reinvigorated as a drummer, peppering the songs with more of the busy, Neil Peart-like fills he made his name on in the band\u2019s early days. His clean vocals, no longer competing with Hinds\u2019 Southern-rock twang, settle into an uncluttered equilibrium with Sanders\u2019 robust growl. Marrow Deep cautiously nudges Mastodon into some new territory, but a lot of it works because it delivers a version of the band that had gone missing from the past few albums.<\/p>\n

The best songs here are mostly the high-energy ones. Lead single \u201cYour Ghost Again\u201d uncorks a spiraling sludge-thrash riff that could have been on Blood Mountain, then slots it into a herky-jerky arrangement next to spacey synths and a hooky chorus that calls out to Hinds from across the veil: \u201cI saw your ghost again\/Followed by crushing feelings of regret.\u201d The bludgeoning \u201cPoisonous Weapons\u201d is a midtempo crusher with mud-thick basslines and strained howls courtesy of Sanders, while \u201cGolden Spires\u201d is the most impressive showcase of Dailor\u2019s dexterous drumming since Crack the Skye. Guest musicians also play a major role on Marrow Deep. Clutch<\/a>\u2019s Neil Fallon and Queens of the Stone Age<\/a>\u2019s Josh Homme, contributors to two of the biggest Mastodon songs in \u201cBlood and Thunder\u201d and \u201cColony of Birchmen,\u201d return with swaggering vocal features on \u201cThe Three Fates\u201d and \u201cSnakes for Dinner,\u201d and Geezer Freaking Butler plays the extended bass intro to \u201cThe Vanishing.\u201d Knowing it\u2019s Geez working the four-string makes it a lot less deflating when that song reveals itself as a chilled-out \u201cPlanet Caravan\u201d smoke break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If they could\u2019ve, Mastodon would\u2019ve played with Brent Hinds forever. When the sludge metal giants fired their troubled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-878014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}