![]() In Emperor Of Sand the band have made an album that not only cements their legend, but typifies the unique place they occupy in modern music. The old adage goes that art comes out of adversity, and the death of Kelliher’s mother was the spark that caused Mastodon’s creative fire to burn. If you can get a message out of the lyrics and the record and everything, then it’s ‘Let’s live in the moment, because you never know.’ When you get handed that death sentence you’re searching for something, asking, ‘What can I do? Where can I find a cure? What doctors can I call?’ And every day my Ma was always reading and looking at her pill bottles and I knew she was going to die, so I was like, ‘Put it down, don’t worry about it, live right now.’ It’s the little things you get caught up in you never know when your time’s going to be up.” “That how I felt when I lost my Ma to cancer,” says Kelliher. Given Kelliher’s predicament and the fate of his mother, it’s not too difficult to make the transition from a frozen world to the baking sands of an arid, dusty hell. There’s a cancer ad here in the UK where the patient is portrayed as vulnerable and lost in a faceless, icy tundra, the wind ripping at his clothes, the snow blinding his eyes until a nurse reaches out to him and brings him back to the world. “I had to do something to stop myself going crazy,” he says. After he’d fed her and held her hand, he would put his headphones on, plug his guitar into his computer and write and play at her side as her life force diminished and faded away, bringing songs to life even in the throes of death. He talks now about sitting by her bedside as she slept. While the band were writing and recording Emperor Of Sand, Kelliher’s mother was dying from cancer. But as Kelliher puts it: “It all came from a very real place.” ![]() So far, so fantastical, and so very Mastodon. ![]() It’s a concept album (not their first – see the box out) with the hero on the run from the death penalty, lost, alone and hungry in a desert wasteland, with a fate worse than death haunting his every step out among the endless dunes. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |