Ah yes, Mastodon. Proof positive that it’s impossible to build the perfect metal band. ‘Cos no matter how close you get to perfection, ultimately, you’re still just one band, four guys, a pathetically small sample of humanity, one that can’t possibly represent the infinite number of dimensions necessary for perfection. But, God love ‘em, Mastodon try and try so hard, and that’s why they are the most exciting and cerebral metal band on the planet, or at least the main one with a bunch of consensus from the underground up through the mainstream.

But even the reigning mad scientists of metal have lives to live outside of creativity’s cauldron, and the collision of those lives lived reverberates within the band’s swirling new prog metal masterpiece Once More ‘Round The Sun.

“There was a lot of turmoil, inner turmoil in the last year of our lives,” confirms a laid-back but healthy looking Bill Kelliher, hanging in a hothouse of an upstairs retreat at the Sound Academy on Toronto’s waterfront, before an impressively large gig headlining over heel-snappers Gojira. “You know, there always is turmoil in life as you get older. There’s kids and more things on your plate, and it’s part of being a touring band, and stuff between each other, and between our significant others. Just personal things, you know, addictions, fights, all sorts of stuff, without giving too much away. So the title is kind of like encompassing one year in the life of us four as individuals. Once More ‘Round The Sun—it takes a year to go around the sun. So that’s basically what it’s chronicling, and it kind of leaves it up to you to decipher. Without coming out and saying like, hey, I had a fucking heroin addiction and I fucking killed five people last year. Instead of saying it like that.”

As for alterations vis-a-vis 2011’s mind-expanding The Hunter, Bill figures, “Well, I had a lot more hand in writing this record than The Hunter. I think there’s just more energy going on with this record. There’s a lot of really deep meanings in a lot of the songs. They’re very personal. I don’t know, I have a better feeling about this record than The Hunter. I mean, I felt really good about The Hunter, but I felt if we’d spent more time... at least I, me personally, I can really only speak for myself. I guess I felt I spent a lot more time really digging into all the riffs and all the aspects of the songwriting, really dug in with different guitars and different tones, and really got some good guitar sounds—this was a more fulfilling record to me.”

Sobriety’s great, but in terms of band dynamic, it’s proven that it can be some kind of monster.

“Well, of course, of course,” muses Bill, asked about getting more done not hungover. “I mean, I was never the person to sleep all day anyway. When the sun gets up, I get up, and when you have kids, you have to get up, you have to be responsible. Like all of a sudden, hey, you can’t just fucking be hungover all day and lay around watching TV. You have kids to take care of. That hit me. You know, it took me a while for it to really sink in, because of my disease. So when I’m on tour now, I can go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up and say, hey, I didn’t do anything stupid last night, and I feel great. I mean, it’s hard enough waking up at 43 years old on a tour bus anyway after a bumpy night of sleep and saying you feel great, but I would be remembering in my head, yeah, I didn’t drink last night. So at least for today, I feel good about that, and I’m not… Because I would wake up early, and I’d be just irritated all day. I didn’t want to play guitar, I didn’t want to sound check, I didn’t want to do anything creative. So that’s really where these riffs came from for this record, from me being a new person.”

Sure there are riffs—many of them and many of them mathematical—but as per the time-honoured Mastodon tradition, there are textures, including acoustic over electrics, just like Rush. And by the way, Clockwork Angels producer Nick Raskulinecz also knob-jobbed Once ‘More Round The Sun.

“He was definitely open to, oh, you want to put acoustic on that? Okay, here you go,” says Bill of Nick. “His choice of, ‘use this one, use that one.’ And I brought a really nice acoustic that Gibson made for me, like painted it silver-burst for me and mailed it to me. I was very excited about that, to play it. We worked so hard on—and meticulously on—writing and arranging these riffs. I mean, he definitely steered us, like as a band, together, to like, get in here. He had to wrangle us too—some of us—to really get in there and do your best. But a lot of the songs, like arrangements, didn’t change a whole hell of a lot. We trimmed up some parts that were going too long. But he kind of let us steer the ship a lot.”

Nick as herder of cats... that plot thickens, but mainly it was nice to see Nick doing for Mastodon what he did for Rush, basically whacking the yardstick.

“I mean, there were certain songs that we really liked that didn’t make it on the record.” reveals Kelliher. “Nick was like, ‘I don’t feel like those are Mastodon songs. I feel like those are more Brent songs; those are more kind of his solo project songs.’ Which I kind of agreed. But we usually have one or two of those, like on The Hunter, we had ‘Sparrow’ and ‘The Hunter,’ the song. Which were, you know, really light in touch. I think with this record, he was like, no, these songs, the ones that made the record, those are the songs on the record. This is the Mastodon you need to bring back to your fans. I don’t want to hear any like Fender Telecasters or semi hollow-bodies, like jingle jangly shit. I don’t want you guys... I want you guys to fuckin’ crank up the distortion and slap on Les Pauls and kick the shit out of the drums and start screaming. I mean, singing, screaming, you know. He’s like, I really want that passion and flame. I want to feed the fire again, because you guys are this fucking huge band.”
“Because we were kind of like in different places in our lives when we were writing this record,” continues Bill. “It was like, some people didn’t come to practice, as much as we would’ve liked them to. Some were working harder than others, trying to pull it all together at the last minute. And he was like, you guys need to be a fucking band. When I come there—because he came to my studio—he said, when I come there, I want you guys to play the whole record with the singing and everything for me. And we’re like, oh, that’s not going to happen. That’s just not going to happen. We’re not going to know this whole record until way after we record it and practice it. Well, he didn’t want to hear that. He said I’m not coming back until you guys play some stuff for me. And we were like, we just don’t work like that anymore. Maybe we used to about ten years ago. It’s like, there’s so many facets to each one of our lives. You know, I was building a house and moving and living in a different location, and Brann was building a new house. And like, hey, when can you come over? Well, I’m waiting for this guy to come over, and I have to sign something. I need to do this, need to do that.”

“I mean, we all still live around Atlanta; we all live really close. But that’s also part of the Once More ‘Round The Sun title. When I’m home, you know, my wife... my wife probably looks at it like, when you’re on the road, that’s when you’re working. But my job isn’t a 9-to-5 job. My job, I’m always going to be ready for Mastodon, where I’ll be picking up a guitar and writing something, or feel an urge, here comes some cool ideas, or somebody sees me the street or whatever, and it’s like, ‘Hey, sign this.’ I’m always going to be that person. I can’t clock out. And so she’s very... since she takes care of the kids when I’m not around, I’m on a schedule. I’ve got to get up at seven. I have to take the kids to school, have to make them lunch, pick them up from school, and then I have to check their homework with them. It’s like the other guys in the band, two of the guys don’t have kids. And so there, they might sleep ‘til noon and say hey, I want to practice at two. But it’s like, I can’t practice at two. I have kids to pick up.”
“We manage to work it out,” says Bill in closing. “It’s like okay, I’ll get a babysitter. But I shouldn’t have to always get a babysitter just because somebody wants to sleep in, you know (laughs). I feel like we should all be on the same page. I understand that certain people don’t have kids and they don’t necessarily have to get up and do anything (laughs), if I want to. So it all worked out. But it’s just like some days, ‘Well, I can’t make it at this time.’ And Nick kinda brought up, like, you guys have to be here and talk to each other. He is the guy that brought us together and said, you guys need to get in the same room together and fucking learn these 15 songs. When I come back, I want you all to be able to play them. So we tried our best, and got it done. And I think the record sounds awesome.”