According to bassist and vocalist Troy Sanders, Mastodon is ready to hit the studio for their new album. In an interview with the Let There Be Talk podcast, Sanders said Mastodon has been working on the new record and would like to have it out early 2021.
"We bought a building a couple of years ago. It's called Ember City," he said. "It's on the west end of Atlanta. And we've got about 17 rehearsal spots in here for local bands and a studio in the basement — a top-shelf studio called West End Sound — where we've been demoing all this material for a new record, with hopes to start recording down there any week now for the real deal, because we've got loads of material. We've been chipping away this whole year. So I'm ready to hit 'record' for real and put a record out the beginning of next year."
Sanders later adds he has no idea who will produce the new record. Mastodon's previous record Emperor of Sand, as well as their Cold Dark Place EP, were both produced by Brendan O'Brien.
"Not sure. That's kind of where we're at right now. Like I said, we've just been slowly piecing things together and chipping away since November, so it's been, like, nine months in. So, pregnancy-wise, we're about due. We're throwing around some ideas and seeing who's willing to come to Atlanta, because we have our own facility here now, so someone needs to be willing to travel here to help us out. So that conversation is happening now, which is exciting to me.
"You get, we call it 'demoitis' — you hear your demo so much, you're losing touch," he continued. "Is this even good anymore? I don't know. While it's still fresh, you need to record for real. You don't want anything, really, to go too long, because it gets stale, or it can get stale, so kind of keeping it fresh and forward-moving is really important for us right now."
Mastodon recently contributed a new song called "Rufus Lives" to the Bill & Ted Face the Music, and released their "Fallen Torches" track off their upcoming Medium Rarities compilation.
