Mastodon have shared a brand new video reflecting on the lack of co-founding guitarist Brent Hinds, revealing they all the time believed the band would ultimately reconcile earlier than his loss of life.

Hinds departed Mastodon in March 2025 after 25 years with the band. 5 months later, he died in a bike accident on the age of 51. Since then, the band has continued with touring guitarist Nick Johnston, who can be anticipated to seem on Mastodon’s upcoming studio album.

Titled The Mastodon within the Room, the 35-minute video sees Troy Sanders, Invoice Kelliher and Brann Dailor handle Hinds’ departure and loss of life publicly for the primary time.

“As we enter a brand new chapter of Mastodon we need to do that the correct approach and discuss Brent,” the video’s description reads. “We’ve all seen the clips, headlines and speculations, however we haven’t advised our story in our personal phrases about our 25 12 months relationship.”

“It isn’t straightforward to speak about Brent, he was our household, somebody all of us beloved wholeheartedly. He was a wild man, our wild man and that got here with some challenges. Each issues are true and we aren’t interested by chasing one reality over the opposite. Dropping him has meant sitting with a kind of grief we by no means anticipated. No extra hugs, no extra excessive fives, no extra disagreements, no extra making up. That half has been onerous, it’s actual.”

Opening the dialogue, drummer Brann Dailor admits he initially wasn’t prepared to talk publicly after Hinds’ loss of life.

“I wasn’t prepared to deal with it. I wasn’t prepared to speak about it, I didn’t even know what occurred,” he says. “And to the followers, I’m sorry I wasn’t capable of be extra for them when that occurred as a result of I couldn’t for myself. I’m nonetheless unpacking it.”

The band additionally revisits a few of its defining moments with Hinds, together with the guitarist’s 2007 head damage after a drunken altercation that left him in a coma.

“We thought the band was over,” remembers Invoice Kelliher.

However regardless of fearing the worst, Kelliher says Hinds returned with a recent burst of creativity: “He was actually fucked up for a very long time… However then there was the opposite aspect of the coin the place we received again house and truly went to go see him and he was taking part in acoustic guitar loads. He was like, ‘I wrote all these songs’… Then Crack the Skye occurred.”

The dialog then turns to Hinds’ remaining years in Mastodon, with the trio describing rising struggles with alcohol, declining morale and more and more inconsistent dwell performances.

“I might see the disconnect taking place and the passion getting much less and fewer, total camaraderie as a four-piece dwindling,” Sanders says. “It grew to become fairly apparent on the time, the onstage power would simply be hit and miss.”

In keeping with Sanders, these points reached a breaking level in the course of the Hushed and Grim period.

“It has all the time been ups and downs for the 25 years of our band, however I feel it was at its peak sadly throughout these previous 5 years.”

He says the band repeatedly tried to deal with the scenario by means of sober, face-to-face conversations earlier than finally concluding nothing was altering.

“We knew in our hearts that this was by no means going to vary. I can’t inform you what number of heart-to-hearts that the three of us had, daytime, sober, as a four-piece, pleading to somebody that you just’ve been with for the majority of your life to hearken to us. It received to the purpose the place the exhibits have been declining within the dwell surroundings, and we have been exhausted, exhausted at throwing all this love at one thing that straight up was not listening or not caring.”

Kelliher provides, “You’re solely as robust as your weakest hyperlink. The three of us may very well be on the market working towards all day and rehearsing and we’d go on the market, and we might depend on him, and it was killing us, killing all of us.”

Sanders additionally remembers the final time the 4 founding members have been collectively. Throughout a band assembly, he learn a letter outlining his considerations with the band’s future, however Hinds stood up and walked out earlier than he had completed.

“And that’s the final time I ever noticed him once more,” Sanders says.

He provides that he’d believed on the time there would ultimately be an opportunity to make issues proper.

“I believed there’d be that turnaround the place we’d meet, apologise, hug and say, ‘I really like you.’ I didn’t know when, however I knew it might occur. And I used to be fucking incorrect.”

“All of us thought that,” says Dailor.

Watch The Mastodon within the Room in full under.