Mastodon‘s third single from Marrow Deep arrives with an animated video whose director conceived it during a ten-hour hospital visit.
The character at the centre of Mastodon‘s new video was drawn on a phone screen by a man who could barely see out of one eye.
“In The Ruins” is the third song released ahead of Marrow Deep, and the animated clip accompanying it comes from Hey Beautiful J*rk. The studio explained where the idea started, and it was not a pleasant afternoon.
“The initial inspiration for Frank and the concept for ‘In The Ruins‘ came to me when I was in the ER for 10 hours with the worst eye infection of my life. The pain was so bad it felt like my eye was revolting and wanted to escape my head. I had just talked to Brann about the meaning of the song and how it was inspired by his and Troy‘s recent losses. The expression ‘picking up the pieces’ came to me and I sketched a very rough version of Frank on my phone, capturing the idea as fast as I could before my eye wanted to escape my face once again.”
Marrow Deep arrives August 28 through Loma Vista Recordings, Mastodon‘s ninth album and their first in five years. It is also their first for the label after roughly two decades on Reprise, and their first without Brent Hinds, who co-founded the band and played in it for 25 years.
Hinds left in March last year in circumstances the band initially described as mutual and he later disputed publicly. He died on August 20, 2025, aged 51, after his motorcycle collided with a car in Atlanta. Five months earlier, on February 12, drummer Brann Dailor had lost his mother, Michele Jeanne Lawrence. The record takes its shape from both.
The album is framed around the Three Fates of Greek mythology and the thread they cut, an idea that closes the record on a track of that name. “In The Ruins” sits sixth of twelve.
Mastodon is a five-piece now. Dailor, bassist Troy Sanders and guitarist Bill Kelliher are joined by lead guitarist Nick Johnston, who first stepped in for live dates in spring 2025, and keyboardist João Nogueira of The Claypool Lennon Delirium. This is the first album either has recorded with the band. They cut it at their own West End Sound in Atlanta, co-producing with Patrik Berger and Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou, with Andrew Scheps mixing and Paul Romano supplying the cover art.
The two earlier singles set out the same territory. “Your Ghost Again“, released in June, came from Dailor repeatedly catching sight of Hinds to his right in the studio, where he always stood. “Snakes For Dinner” followed in July with Josh Homme guestingm his first appearance on a Mastodon record since “Colony Of Birchmen” on 2006’s Blood Mountain.
The band take the record out on the “Poisonous Weapons Tour“ from September 16, with Deafheaven and Alcest supporting, wrapping October 24 at the Dallas edition of Sick New World.
Marrow Deep tracklist:
- “Barbarians Blood”
- “Poisonous Weapons”
- “Your Ghost Again”
- “Snakes For Dinner”
- “Out Like A Lamb”
- “In The Ruins”
- “They’re Coming For You”
- “Golden Spires”
- “Moth And Bone”
- “A Vampire’s Demeanor”
- “The Vanishing”
- “The Three Fates”
