Mastodon have addressed the speculation surrounding the factors that led to the departure of their late guitarist Brent Hinds.
Hinds, who parted ways with the band in March 2025, died last summer following a collision with a car while riding his motorcycle in Atlanta, Georgia. He was just 51 years old.
In a 35-minute film titled The Mastodon in the Room, the band – Brann Dailor, Bill Kelliher and Troy Sanders – remember the life of their friend and bandmate, while detailing the circumstances which led to Hinds' exit.
A statement from the band reads: "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.
"It isn’t easy to talk about Brent, he was our family, someone we all loved wholeheartedly," it continues. "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. No more hugs, no more high fives, no more disagreements, no more making up. That part has been hard, it's real.
"We put this conversation out there so you can hear it directly from us, you all deserve that."
As the surviving members watch archive footage of their late friend in a cinema, Sanders says that Hinds' problems with alcohol causing rancour in the band, and peaked during the recording of their 2021 album Hushed and Grim.
"His dissociation was very evident during [that] period – both his energy and his effort towards us," says Sanders. "It’s like, no one’s required to be here, but we’re in it for the heart, the purity, and the authenticity of what we do and what we’ve built.
"And that led to the recording process, which was, in my opinion, the most separate that we’ve ever been in a studio recording a double album. The dark tones, the alcohol, and the things that had grips had their nails in him harder than ever before. There have always been ups and downs for the 25 years of our band, but I think it was at its peak, unfortunately, during these past five years.
"I mean, those few years of touring on Hushed and Grim was the weakest band solidity and performance that we had had in a decade. And I knew in my heart that this was possibly going to plateau. And what happens after it plateaus is it goes down."
The band called a meeting to tell Hinds what their issues were for the sake of their own mental health, after it was clear that repeated discussions about his drinking were being ignored. Hinds walked out of the meeting, and later said he was fired from the band on social media.
"Unfortunately, we knew in our hearts that this was never going to change," admits Sanders. "I cannot tell you how many heart-to-hearts that the three of us had – daytime, sober – as a four-piece, pleading to someone that you've been with the bulk of your life to listen to us: 'You need to take these avenues for your happiness, for your health, for our sake, for your sake, for your wife's sake, for all of this.'
"I think it got to the point where the shows were declining in the live environment and we were exhausted," he continues. "Exhausted by throwing all this love at something that was straight up not listening or not caring. At some point we realised, we can't do anything else. What is there to do? We've exhausted all of this. Are we going to continue shooting ourselves in the foot, or are we going to keep conquering the world?"
Dailor describes the day Hinds left the band as "horrible" but the decision came from "a place of love."
"It was really depressing and sad and fucked up," says the drummer. "And we just wanted that beautiful, amazing creature, Brent Hinds, to be out there serving up the honey-baked ham and screaming his head off and playing, ripping amazing, incredible, beautiful solos. We desperately wanted that guy, but he showed us time and time and time and time and time again that that person wasn't coming back without some kind of dramatic change.
"We really were coming from a place of love," he adds. "It's like, maybe this will be like some kind of bottom for him. You know what I mean? You never know. We had to set some boundaries and we had to take care of our own sort of mental health."
Watch the film below.
