There was little doubt with the release of their 2002 debut, the universally acclaimed eleven-song wolf cry Remission, that Atlanta’s Mastodon would soon become one of heavy metal’s most fascinating and creatively challenging prospects.

Over the course of six studio albums, the band have charted an unprecedented course that recalls what legendary British DJ John Peel once said of his favourite band, The Fall – “They are always different; they are always the same.”

While they moved through multiple concepts, arrangements, and sounds, Mastodon’s fury and musicianship has always remained at the forefront. To learn more about what it takes to get one of the world’s biggest metal bands to sound so huge, we spoke to drummer Brann Dailor.

You can see Mastodon perform songs from their latest album, Once More Round The Sun, and others during their first ever Australian headline tour, which kicks off later this week – see below for all details!

Style By Necessity

Growing up, we didn’t have a van, we just had people’s cars so we were going to play our first gig and it takes like four trips to get a huge ridiculous drum set there. So you figure out a way to downsize. That’s the reason I play the size drum kit that I play, because of that first gig with the huge drum kit and it didn’t really work out, you know?

Early Beginnings

My first kit? Oh my god, my understanding of equipment was zero. I was a little kid and I didn’t know anything. I just knew I like to bang on the drums and that was pretty much it. But we moved into my grandma and grandpa’s old house… so my uncle, who had moved out and moved in with his now wife, girlfriend at the time, he moved out and left his old drum kit there.

I think it was an early ’70s Rogers kit with an 18″ kick drum. So I could always play that kit ’cause he had this other kit, like a blue Pearl kit, so he gave me that Rogers one. I took it and the snare drum didn’t have a bottom, so no snare on it, the hi-hat didn’t have a clutch, so it didn’t really do the hi-hat thing, it was just closed all of the time.

The kick drum didn’t have a front head and it didn’t have legs, it just wobbled, so I had like two cinderblocks either side to stop it from rolling away, basically. I had like a regular chair with a back on it as my drum stool. I didn’t have anything, just what my uncle left at my grandparent’s place, which is what I learned on.

I played that thing every day and just messed around on it, played along to records. I had a record player behind me with headphones. I think that’s probably the best way to go about it, if you can make that thing sound good, now you can have something a little nicer.

Moving Up In The World

When I turned 13 or 14, my mum and my step-dad got me a five-piece white Pearl, probably a lower line Pearl kit, but I didn’t care, it was brand new and that was awesome. That was the best Christmas ever. When I unwrapped the first tom, I was like, “Oh my God!” I knew it was a full kit, because I could see the other boxes there.

I got it down into the basement and started jamming. I had some real tools then. I still had the same old cymbals, but I eventually got some new cymbals… and I remember my friend brought his kit over and we combined the two into like a double-kick setup and played Slayer and Iron Maiden and Metallica and stuff.

After that, I think I was 15 and my grandfather said, “I’ll match you. Whatever you can earn this year, I’ll match you and we’ll get you a new kit.” So we did that and I was able to get like a double bass chrome Ludwig rocker kit. I can’t remember how many pieces it was, but I think it was 8″, 19″, 12″, 13″… It was like an eight or nine piece kit, it was huge.

That was pretty exciting to have that and it opened up a whole bunch of different things for me playing-wise and I used that thing for a long time, all throughout my early days with Lethargy and that was the kit that had to get sized down, because it was just too big to fit into my mum’s car and get it to the kit.

Take Me To Europe

So I went from that to a Fibes kit. I worked the summer in the summer of ’96, I was working a job at a mini-mart, and I couldn’t afford anything, living pay check to pay check. And I knew I needed a new kit, because my kit was just beat up.

We had been playing out a lot and it was just getting hammered, because I didn’t have cases for it and I would leave it at this house and a lot of the time people would go down and play my kit and I couldn’t really do anything to stop that, so it just could beat up real fast.

It was frustrating, because it was falling apart and I didn’t have the money to fix it or buy a new one. So a friend of mine who lived in Martha’s Vineyard invited me there and said, “A friend of mine owns a bakery, you can work there, you can work 110 hours a week and make some good money.”

So I did that and I ended up walking off the island with six or seven thousand dollars, it was more money than I’d ever had in my whole life. I was gonna backpack around Europe or something, but I said to myself I’m gonna buy a drum kit with this money and hopefully if I buy this new kit, my drums are gonna take me to Europe.

Cementing The Lineup

So I bought this Fibes kit, it was a beautiful kit and it was like 10″, 12″, 13″, 16″ floor tom and it was a 20″ kick drum, and it was awesome. It had cymbals, I bought new cymbals, new everything.

I got Lethargy back going and we started doing a lot more but then it sort of fizzled and just as that was fizzling, I got into Today Is The Day and I brought that drum kit with me.

That’s all I had with me, along with a bag of clothes and some VHS tapes of movies I liked. I had all my belongings in a little recording studio, slept on the couch, played in Today Is The Day, did a bunch of touring with them, and then me and Bill moved to Atlanta in 2000 and my setup had stayed the same since.

It’s just the 10″, 12″, 13″ or 10″, 12″, 14″, but now I have a 22″ kick drum, I still have the same two crashes, an 18″ crash on my left and a 20″ crash on my right. And I’ve gone back and forth with having a big 21″ China cymbal on my right, but I have the 21″ ride cymbal on my right, hi-hats, pretty simple.

But I had the Fibes kit all the way up until 2004, when I got signed to Toma, because when we started travelling and going to Europe a lot, I ended up with some winners as far as drum kits go, they were pretty nasty.

Fibes just don’t have any kind of international hookup, so I figured to sign with Toma would be the right move because they make great drums and they’re everywhere. So If I go down to Australia I can play a kit that I’m used to and sounds awesome and that I know is gonna be killer.

Guarding The Drum

On ‘Crystal Skull’, I had a 50 gallon drum that I borrowed from a homeless guy, because he seemed to be guarding it. We were just driving around town looking for one, I thought there’s gotta be one somewhere. So we saw it and saw this dude sitting next to it, guarding it, and I was like, “Hey, can I borrow it?”

He wanted to know what it was for. I told him that it was for an album and we needed it to do this intro and he said, “You gotta put my name on the album and give me credit.” And we were like, “No problem. Of course.”

But when we came back to deliver the drum, he was gone, so I never got his name. But we put it back right where it was supposed to be. So that’s the only thing I changed up.

Getting Percussive

Mano sent me one of those percussion boxes that you sit on. But I don’t know what to do with it, to be honest with you. I think I’ll have to pull up a video of someone on YouTube playing it in order to figure it out. I think you sit on it and play it with your hands, so that’s cool. But they just mailed it to my house and I was like, “I don’t know what to do with this, really.”

Mastodon 2015 Australian Tour

Friday, 27th March 2015
Festival Hall, Melbourne
Tickets: Ticketmaster

Saturday, 28th March 2015
Big Top Luna Park, Sydney
Tickets: Oztix | Eventopia

Sunday, 29th March 2015
Eatons Hill Hotel, Brisbane
Tickets: Oztix | Eventopia

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