Brann Dailor says Marrow Deep refers to his mother and to Brent Hinds, the two deepest relationships he had.
Brann Dailor has explained where the title of Marrow Deep came from, and the answer is two people. Speaking to JD Lewis of iHeartRadio Canada, the Mastodon drummer and vocalist said the phrase describes the deepest a relationship can go — and that he lost both of his in the space of six months.
“The marrow deep, it’s as deep as you can get into a relationship. So, first and foremost my mother, but then a brother of 25 years. And when you kind of go deep into writing deeply emotional music with other people and you sort of bare your soul with them and have that primitive, ritualistic… You kind of tap into the children that still kind of live inside you. That’s, I feel, as deep as you can get into a relationship,” Dailor said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
He drew a distinction between friendship and what making music together produces.
He added: “A lot of people are friends with, and they have friends, they have really close friends, and you’re super-close friends, but there’s something about creating art with another person that, for me, elevates a friendship past the normal hanging-out-and-helping-me-move friendship levels we got there. And for me, life is about the relationships that you’ve have and the relationships that you make. And so I was very lucky to experience some very, very deep personal relationships that gave me so much joy and satisfaction in my life. I was also very lucky to have a profound relationship with my mom. I know that not everyone has that, which is sad, but I was able to, so I’m very fortunate. And both those relationships are the deepest, marrow deep, and so that was what I felt should be the name of the record.”
Dailor‘s mother died in February 2025. The following month Brent Hinds was removed from Mastodon after 25 years, and in August he died at 51 in a motorcycle collision in Atlanta. The band went into the studio to record Marrow Deep about a week later.
Dailor, Troy Sanders and Bill Kelliher spoke about Hinds at length in July, in a 35-minute documentary called “The Mastodon In The Room“. It shows the three of them in a private Atlanta cinema watching archive footage of the band and reacting to it, and opens with Dailor onstage at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer on 21 August 2025, the day after Hinds died.
The band explained why they made it: “As we enter a new chapter of Mastodon we want to do this the right way and talk about Brent. We’ve all seen the clips, headlines and speculations, but we haven’t told our story in our own words about our 25 year relationship.”
Their statement continued: “It isn’t easy to talk about Brent, he was our family, someone we all loved wholeheartedly. He was a wild man, our wild man and that came with some challenges. Both things are true and we aren’t interested in chasing one truth over the other. Losing him has meant sitting with a type of grief we never expected.”
Dailor said in the film that he had not been in a state to say anything at the time. “I wasn’t ready to address it. I wasn’t ready to talk about it, I didn’t even know what happened,” he said. “And to the fans, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be more for them when that happened because I couldn’t for myself. I’m still unpacking it.”
The three also said they had expected to reconcile with Hinds eventually, and that the split would turn out to be another chapter rather than the end of it.
Marrow Deep came out yesterday through Loma Vista Recordings, the band’s first full-length without Hinds and the first recorded as a five-piece, with guitarist Nick Johnston and keyboardist João Nogueira now full members.
The band co-produced at their own West End Sound in Atlanta with Patrik Berger and Kurt Ballou, and Andrew Scheps mixed. Second single “Snakes For Dinner” features Josh Homme, who had previously appeared on “Colony Of Birchmen” from 2006’s Blood Mountain.
The “Poisonous Weapons Tour” opens on September 16 at Hard Rock Live in Orlando and finishes on October 24 at Sick New World Dallas, with Deafheaven and Alcest supporting throughout.
