Death shadows few bands like it seems to shadow Mastodon. Several of the Atlanta band’s past albums have been directly and indirectly informed by loss and grief, from 2009’s psychedelic prog-metal masterpiece Crack The Skye (inspired by the death of drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor’s sister) to 2021’s Hushed And Grim (dedicated to their late manager Nick John).
Marrow Deep hits even harder. It comes 12 months after the death of their former guitarist Brent Hinds, who left the band acrimoniously at the start of 2025, as well as the death of Dailor’s mother. How much of Mastodon’s ninth album has been specifically shaped by those events isn’t clear – lyrically they’ve always dealt in the cryptic and the elliptic, although that title is something of a tell.
