Listening back to these archival tapes from May 2012, the raw grit in Brann Dailor’s voice crackles over the phone line from Calgary. Mastodon was deep in the touring cycle for The Hunter, an album that felt like both a victory lap and a deliberate pivot. They were bigger than ever, a Grammy-nominated beast that had somehow dragged sludge metal into the mainstream consciousness. But the conversation wasn't about stadium lights or chart positions. It was about the grind. And for Mastodon, the grind always seemed to start at the Canadian border.
You could hear the fatigue mix with disbelief as Dailor recounted years of trouble. It was a familiar story for any band trying to cross the 49th parallel, a bureaucratic headache that felt personal. He chalked it up to a long-standing hangover from a bygone political era. “It's tough to get into the Canadian border because of, I think, Reagan in the eighties with the War on Drugs implemented much stricter border patrols on the U.S. end of things and they repaid the favour and it has never been restored to the original ‘come on in,’” he says, the frustration still palpable a decade later.
But for a band that tours relentlessly, it became a recurring nightmare. He tells a story about a clerical error that nearly got him permanently banned, a Kafkaesque mix-up where another member’s criminal record was mistakenly attached to his name. It cost him thousands to prove his own innocence. “I ended up having to pay an attorney something like $2,500 or $3,000 to get... a criminal record from them saying that I didn't do any of these things,” he recounts. Life’s not fair. No kidding.
This adversarial relationship with Canadian customs wasn't new. It was foundational. Dailor digs up a classic road story from their earliest days, a tale that perfectly captures the starving-artist phase of a band that would one day headline festivals. They were en route to their first-ever sold-out show, a gig in Winnipeg that was meant to bankroll the rest of their scrappy tour.
Of course, they were denied entry. Devastated, they turned the van around and drove into the American plains. “We said to each other, ‘The first bar that we see, we're gonna pull in there. We're gonna go in and explain to them what happened and ask if we can play,’” Dailor says. That bar was the Bison Sports Bar in Fargo. It did not look promising.
The owner agreed. They set up near the dartboards. “We played a full set and one by one everyone left. And we were paid with chicken sandwiches and as much Budweiser as we could drink,” he says with a laugh. They lost their big payday but gained a defining piece of band lore. A perfect snapshot of paying your dues.
But the interview pivots to a much more celebrated collaboration, one that seemed to come from another universe entirely. The split seven-inch with Feist for Record Store Day. It was a genuine culture-shock moment in music, the titans of prog-metal and the queen of Canadian indie-folk finding common ground. The whole thing was born in the most British of settings: the green room of Later... with Jools Holland.
The show’s lineup itself was a beautiful chaos: Mastodon, Feist, Bon Iver, a French jazz-funk band and an old Rat Pack crooner named Buddy Greco. It was a testament to Holland’s eclectic taste. And backstage, an idea sparked between Mastodon’s Brent Hinds and Leslie Feist. “I just viewed it more of like a pipe dream at the time that it was talked about,” Dailor admits. The logistics seemed impossible, with both bands launching massive album cycles.
We saw the Bison Sports Bar... We went in there and talked to the owner and he said, 'Sure. You can set up over near the dartboards when these guys are done playing their dart game.' ... We played a full set and one by one everyone left. And we were paid with chicken sandwiches and as much Budweiser as we could drink.
It was bassist Troy Sanders who, perhaps strategically, let the cat out of the bag in the press, forcing their hands. And the result was spectacular. Mastodon took on Feist’s “A Commotion,” turning its urgent pulse into a full-blown percussive assault. It wasn't a gimmick; it was a re-engineering. “That's the one that spoke to us the most that made the most sense for us and seemed like the one that we could make our own,” Dailor explains. They heard the skeleton of a Mastodon song in there and built a monster around it.
Dailor’s analysis of the flip side, however, is where his deep musicality really shines. He speaks about Feist’s cover of their track “Black Tongue” with genuine awe. He doesn’t just say it’s good; he gives a pinpoint-accurate critique. “I think it's awesome. It's really cool. It reminds me of sort of like a Black Rider era Tom Waits or something,” he says. The comparison is perfect. It’s a masterclass in artistic interpretation.
“It definitely carries the weight of the original without being, you know, loud, metalized, but she still is able to maintain the intensity of the original with a softer version,” he continues. “It was very eerie and creepy the way she did it, so I love it.” He understood that she didn't just cover the song; she translated its core menace into her own language.
This spirit of collaboration was clearly on his mind. He mentions a desire to work with Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, another artist known for pushing boundaries. This hints at the band’s mindset during The Hunter era. After the dense, element-themed concepts of Leviathan, Blood Mountain and the deeply personal prog of Crack the Skye, they needed to open a window. The Hunter was that breath of fresh air. It was a collection of songs, not a singular narrative.
Looking back, this was a critical move. While some long-time fans missed the epic scope, the album allowed them to experiment with concision and immediacy. Dailor seems wary of forcing another concept. “It's very important to let time pass and let yourself be inspired naturally by your life that happens, you know, and not push things too much,” he says. It’s the sound of a band refusing to be creatively cornered.
The timing of this interview was also significant because it marked the 10-year anniversary of their debut full-length, Remission. An entirely different beast. Dailor looks back on it with a mix of pride and the exhaustion of memory. “It's pretty ferocious, you know,” he says. That’s an understatement. Remission was a raw nerve, a dizzying onslaught of polyrhythms and sludge that felt genuinely dangerous.
He remembers the era fondly, a time of “discovering something brand new and exciting and just really getting out there and working really hard to get somewhere.” He even jokes about performing the album in its entirety for the anniversary before quipping, “I'd like to kill the 24-year-old that played drums on that record.” It’s a hilarious and honest admission from one of modern metal’s most revered drummers about the sheer physical insanity of his own early work.
The conversation then shifts to aesthetics. Mastodon has always stood apart from metal’s more theatrical tendencies. No spikes, no leather, no contrived “metal attitude.” Their stage presence is pure function, a direct reflection of the music’s complexity. For Dailor, this isn’t an accident. It’s a philosophy rooted in the music that shaped them.
“As metal as we are, we can't go back and pretend that punk rock and grunge didn't happen and seriously affect our aesthetic,” he states plainly. He cites Neurosis and the Melvins, but his core example is the biggest of them all. “Metallica came out in jeans and t-shirts. That's what really made Metallica so endearing to everyone was the fact that they look like the older kids that live down the street.”
He invokes the ghost of Cliff Burton in his bell bottoms and Misfits shirt. That was the ethos: authenticity over artifice. The idea that the music should be the spectacle. You look like the kid in the crowd because, fundamentally, you still are. It’s a rejection of the rock-god mythology, and it’s central to Mastodon’s entire appeal.
Finally, we touch on the Grammy nominations. Dailor is appreciative but deeply realistic about what they mean. He sees it as a nod from a world they never expected to be a part of, but he’s under no illusions about the industry machine. He correctly identifies award shows as being “all kind of monetarily based... it's all about money.” It’s a refreshingly cynical and accurate take.
This 2012 recording captures Mastodon at a fascinating inflection point. They were celebrating their ferocious past with Remission’s anniversary, navigating a more accessible and collaborative present with The Hunter and the Feist project, and keeping the door wide open for their future. They were road-weary but creatively energized, a band that had earned its place not through theatrics or compromise, but through sheer musical force and a stubborn refusal to be anything other than themselves.
519 Magazine Archive: We are thrilled to officially unearth the Rockstar Weekly Digital Vault. This isn't just a re-post; it's a high-fidelity restoration of a pivotal era in music journalism. By pairing original print dates with modern retrospectives, we’re bridging the gap between historical rock-and-roll grit and the lightning-fast performance of today’s web. These stories—once locked in physical print and lost URLs—are now back, fully searchable, and optimized for a new generation of fans.
We are thrilled to officially unearth the 519 Magazine Digital Vault. This isn't just a re-post; it's a high-fidelity restoration of a pivotal era in music journalism. By pairing original print dates with modern retrospectives, we're bridging the gap between historical rock-and-roll grit and the lightning-fast performance of today's web. These stories—once locked in physical print and lost URLs—are now back, fully searchable, and optimized for a new generation of fans.
