Mastodon's Brent Hinds has a weird love/hate relationship with the heavy metal genre. In 2015, he controversially stated "I never really liked heavy metal in the first place [..] I’ve been trying to get Mastodon to not be such a heavy metal band, because I fucking hate heavy metal, and I don’t want to be in a heavy metal band." This led to a bit of backlash from the band's fanbase.
In an interview earlier this year, Hinds said that his quote was taken out of context, stating "said 'I fucking 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…'"
On a recent appearance on The Jasta Show, Hinds doubled-down on his statement and decided to rope Judas Priest into it:
"I don't. I don't really [like metal]. [I grew up listening to Judas Priest, but] Judas Priest is not metal, people, it's rock 'n' motherfuckin' roll! Who in their right mind that has a brain in their head thinks that Judas Priest sounds like a metal band?"
When Jasta pointed to the legendary Priest album Painkiller, Hinds responded:
"To me, that's just hard rock 'n' roll. I'm not buying into that. I heard all Judas Priest songs, I went on tour with them, I know them all personally, they're amazing people.
"They truly think they're metal gods, like Rob Halford's like, 'I'm a metal god.' That's weird to say, but whatever. [Chuckles] Like, just don't say it, it just makes you sound weird when you say it."
All of this begs the question – if Hinds doesn't consider Judas Priest metal, then what exactly does he consider metal? Is he talking about deathcore? Metalcore? What exactly does he not like?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtJbHTLPON8[/youtube]
