MetalSucks recently got the chance to interview MASTODON bassist and co-vocalist Troy Sanders during some pre-show downtime at the Rockstar Mayhem Festival's stop at Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, NY.

Adorned in sweat pants and flip-flops and, by his own admission, fighting a hangover, Sanders was amicable as he led us into the band's dressing room, offered us Gatorades, and then plopped down on the band's cooler to get down to business. Sanders shared his thoughts about playing in front of huge crowds that are by and large not at the show to see Mastodon, the band's forthcoming new album, and, yes, even barbecuing.

An excerpt follows:

MetalSucks: So you mentioned that you're sort of going more for that hard rock kind of audience. Is the new material that you're writing going in that direction too? Obviously you guys worked with producer Matt Bayles for a long time...

Sanders: "Yeah."

MetalSucks: ...and now you're doing a record with Brendan O'Brien.

Sanders: "Yeah."

MetalSucks: So is the new album more in that hard rock direction as well?

Sanders: "I think most of our new material is going to be more under the rock category, but it's pretty epic and involved, extremely layered, broad, melodic, dark, and creepy. When we met up with Brendan, he had heard some of our demos and he liked some of the rock elements that we had with our stuff. We told him that we were interested in recording, quote, "a classic rock record that will hopefully have a long shelf life and have solid songs from start to finish, and that will live a lot longer than just listening to it a few times and shelving it." Our favorite records of all time that we always constantly revisit in our own collection are by bands like Journey, Yes, King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Kansas, and all the shit that we grew up with and were inspired by and continue to revisit. We kind of wanted to attempt to capture a record like that, [at least] in our eyes and ears. The stars had aligned perfectly because Brendan's a perfect match, a funny dude and a great musician who has an amazing ear. He can pick out little things that we can try to do that we hadn't even thought of before, whether it be vocally or sonically with the guitars or something. So it is going to be more of a rock kind of Count Chocula-meets-Deep Purple thing. That's kind of what we're saying. We finish that record in September. There's currently not a title, other song titles aren't confirmed, and that's all we can really say about that record now because we're not going to spoil the element of mystery."

MetalSucks: It does sound like there's a real difference between this record and your previous ones.

Sanders: "Yeah, this is probably the biggest departure we've done from record to record. The four of us are incredibly stoked on the material."

MetalSucks: Do you worry at all about the hardcore fans going along for the ride?

Sanders: "We've never worried about anything outside of the fact that the four of us dig it, love it, and our hearts and souls are in it. At the end of the day if the four of us feel that way, then anything that happens outside of our circle is a bonus, dessert, gravy, or whatever, and that's great. It's been obvious since day one that we've never really written music to please other people. So we've been playing a totally different genre since day one. We like to create the music that we feel good about so that we can channel all of our emotions and energy through this art that we call Mastodon. So it's the four of us. Of course we want people to like our music, but that's not the initial goal when we're writing music and creating stories."

To read the full interview, visit www.metalsucks.net.