Paulina Subia: How has it felt to perform songs from ‘Marrow Deep’ live on this tour?

It feels great! I get a really good reception. I don’t see droves of people leaving and going to the bathroom, which is comforting for a record, you know? I know when you’re in the band and you’re constantly working, writing and touring, it’s obviously a different perspective than the fans. Universally, I feel like people are digging ‘Marrow Deep’ maybe a little bit more than the last few [albums]. I’ve heard from a lot of people, ‘I wish you’d play more stuff off the new record.’ I’m like, man, that’s not something you hear very often. 

When you guys write and record, do you have, in the back of your mind, the intention of how a song will translate live?

Yeah, it’s definitely something that you have on your mind. I remember when we were doing [2009’s] ‘Crack the Skye’, it was very lofty. There were a lot of decorations on that Christmas tree! [Producer] Brendan O’Brien was like, ‘This is your record. Don’t think about that; you can worry about that later.’ It turned out to be extremely difficult to recreate [the sound] live, but over time, I feel like we’ve gotten better at balancing those two things, still making something with a lot of ear candy and then, being able to recreate it live.

Can I ask about how the songwriting for ‘Marrow Deep’ went for you all, considering that you were in the midst of this collective grief but, of course, you each had your own perspectives, as well?

[We had] been working on a lot of this material for a pretty long time; it went through many different manifestations and got shelved a bunch of times, just for different things. We went out on the Leviathan tour [in 2024], we did an Australian run, there were a bunch of things that came up where, we worked on [a] new batch of songs for a month and a half, say, and then we just put it up and worked on other stuff. I was really kind of hoping that Brent would, eventually, start coming back and want to be creative. I had put that out to him, [and] let him know that I was wanting that: wanting the collaboration with everybody to be back in the fold. 

To start with, it was really just myself and Bill, getting together in his basement, and starting to sift through things. I’ll work with anybody who wants to work because I’m always ready to go. I like to play the drums and I like to write Mastodon riffs and see what we got, and just work on it — because I don’t really have that much else going on in my life. [Laughs] I mean, I do, but [music is] the thing that makes me happiest, even if it’s frustrating. You have to have these barriers that you need to smash through to get to the good stuff. I know that [the] good stuff is waiting on the other side, so I don’t mind banging my head against the wall when something is frustrating. Other people don’t like that, so they want everything to be easy, but it’s not realistic.

So, I would go over to Bill’s house and we would sit there for eight hours a day, just riffing. I’d have a guitar — I’m a bad guitar player, but I can get rhythmic ideas across and notes and stuff, and then he can take it and make it better. Then, after a month or two of doing that, you have all these skeletons of songs where you have three or four parts, and then, we’d put it on hold because we have to go do something else Mastodon-related. 

So, it wasn’t this intense, four-year process; songs would be worked on and then put away, and you have them in the back of your head, which I think was good. You sort of have to let time dictate where everything ends up, but so much had happened by the time we got to February. We had a bunch of shows, so we were doing one-offs, before we had that clean break where we were going to have some time off. But then, during that time, my mom passed away. I went up to Rochester, New York, for the funeral and all the things that went along with that really heartbreaking situation.

Then, we had the turmoil with Brent [note: Brent Hinds’ departure from Mastodon was announced on March 7, 2025], which was also really sad, and I hated that but it was what everybody needed. Then, we had a European tour where we were thinking, ‘Okay we’re going to dig in on all this new material and really work on it while we’re in Europe, all together, with the new unit. And, by the time we get back to Atlanta, we are going to record in the first week of September.’ That was the plan and what we ultimately ended up doing… 

The day we played our last show of the Hushed and Grim tour, which was in Alaska, was when Brent passed, but we had the studio time booked, we had the producers and the engineers, everybody coming into town… it was all kind of set in stone. There was a moment in time, for me, where I just didn’t really think it was the best idea to go in and do that. But, I never shared that information with anybody. I just, luckily, decided to not stay in bed and rot. And then, I think a better idea was to go into the studio. 

I had read about how you entered the studio quite soon after Brent’s passing. and you’ve said how there was no room for any sense of metaphor, in writing together; there almost had to be a sort of grounding in reality. I’m wondering how that compulsion to create in the midst of those emotions came to you at the time, and how maintaining that strength in sitting with that weight came with it?

I think it was really good that we had a lot of work to do. I think that when you’re in the pit of grief, the best thing for you is work, and we had plenty of that to focus on. Really getting the musical compositions down and getting those tracked was paramount, so we really paid attention to all the minutiae of the songs, the nooks and crannies of everything. And, making sure that we liked every transition and all those kinds of technical aspects: all the chords were the coolest chords, the transitions were as good as they could be [and considering] the finite details of the songwriting, before we went in there with the lyrics. 

The lyrics were something I was maybe avoiding, because I knew what it was going to be all about, but I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to dig in on that. Once I started putting pen to paper, it was obvious that it was going to be much more useful as a tool to me, personally, to sit and work through it, lyrically. Just to sort of try to unpack it and understand my relationship with both of these people, my mom and Brent, and how I felt about everything.

Your mom plays such a large role on ‘Marrow Deep’, and I was really moved by how you write of her memory. I’m thinking of ‘The Vanishing,’ for instance, with the imagery of her and your sister; I thought it was a lovely way of honouring them. What was it like for you to honour your mom’s memory on this album?

I was lucky enough to have a really close relationship with my mom. I was raised by my mom, me and my sister. She was a huge part of my life, like most people. But then, there are some people that don’t have a close relationship with their parents, with their mom, but I’m definitely lucky [to have been] one of those guys. We were super close: I used to run everything by her, I would send her all the demos, I would read her all my lyrics, and she was always very insightful and had something interesting to say and to add. It was so difficult to go through this whole process with this record without her being there, but then, some of the songs wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for her departure, you know? But, I knew I was going to try my best to honour her, her life and legacy, in the best way that I could.

It’s sad, she always felt insignificant or small, and she would say that to me and I’d be so upset with her for feeling that way, but I can totally understand. So, I just try to talk about her whenever I can and let people know how integral she was in my life. But also, how encouraging she was of me being a drummer, being an artist in any way, shape or form, and being so supportive of every single thing that I did and being my biggest cheerleader, and how happy that made me throughout my life.  

There’s a lot of kids out there that aren’t so lucky, with disapproving parents that aren’t so stoked that their kids want to be artists or musicians, that want them to do something more monetarily lucrative that’s going to make them some kind of successful person. But my mom really imparted to me that the only true success in life is if you’re really, genuinely happy, with what you’re doing, within your personal relationships. She preached that endlessly to me, and was just a really wonderful person that was dealt a really unfair hand in life with a lot of medical problems, and didn’t get to do all the things that she dreamed of, and lived a little bit vicariously through me.

Then, losing her daughter when my sister was 14 was devastating for our family, but for her, she never really fully recovered from it. So, with ‘The Vanishing’, I saw this opportunity to kind of put her into the cosmos with Skye. With Geezer Butler playing the intro, it was the perfect full-circle moment, as she was a big Sabbath fan and she loved Geezer Butler. That’s all I can do after she’s gone, is try to give her a moment in the cosmos on a Mastodon record. That’s the only thing I have.

I thought ‘Snakes For Dinner’ was a really beautiful tribute; it strikes that balance of wanting to retain the best memories after someone has gone, but also feeling that sort of emptiness in being the one left to do so.

Yeah, that’s exactly it. For me, it’s like the day after, you kind of feel destitute, you’re kind of left with nothing. Then, the grime and then the memories is kind of sifting through all this terribleness, but the good stuff rises to the top and you take that with you.

Would you mind talking about how that song came together and what it meant for you all?

That was one that we were working on for a while, musically. I liked the way it flowed and it sounded different for us, and I had no idea what the vocals were going to be. I think we were in the demoing process at the studio, and when I laid the chorus over top of that part, everyone went, “Oooh!” So, I think that’s when it took shape. 

Then, Troy put his part on there, and the keyboard solo was never there. Then, I walked in and João [Nogueira, keyboardist] was just doing some crazy shit on the keyboards. I was in the back of my mind thinking, ‘That’s not going to stay there.’ [Laughs] Then, we kept listening to it and I heard it one time without [the keyboards] and I’m like, ‘I guess it needs to be there. Now I miss it.’ Now, I’m happy that it’s there.

I loved learning about the myth of ‘The Three Fates’, too, from your interpretation of it on the album. The song itself sounds like it’s intended for a film, in its production. Was ending on such a grand note intentional?

Yeah, I looked at it as, that’s the beginning of the next chapter as the three Fates. We intentionally have João and Nick [Johnston, guitarist] going back and forth towards the end that take us into this grand finale. I liked how it worked in three movements, so it was perfect that it was the three Fates. Then, we just left a lot of real estate for those two guys to do their thing, and they delivered 100%.

I think my lyrics took some tooling to get together, and Troy and I worked together on that one. I had written this little piece of poetry for Neil Fallon from Clutch to do, like a ranting of his perfect, almost a Southern Baptist preacher-type of thing that he does. I sent it to him and I was like, ‘Tell me if this is stupid or not,’ [Laughs] because spoken word is hard. There’s such a fine line where some people think it’s just unable to not be cheesy, but I think he pulled it off.

Do you find yourself turning to songwriting as a sort of everyday practice, or does something have to compel you to do so?

I guess if you’re in songwriting mode and you know that tomorrow when you wake up, you’re going to go start working on songs and riffs, you sort of are in that mode. Every day, if I would go to Bill’s and we would work on stuff, whatever the last thing is that we worked on, it might be stuck in my head and then, I would maybe get another part to go after it. So, the next day I’d go over to Bill’s and be like, ‘Okay, I think I got another riff!’ Other than that, I guess riffs just come to you and you might hum them into your phone, so it’s always kind of happening luckily. But, there are different ways of being, I guess. It’s more intense when you’re actively working on it; then, you’re thinking about it constantly and you’re rearranging songs in your head and it keeps you up at night. 

If you get an idea or a new way to sort of twist something, like, ‘I think should be the main riff and should go in the middle, and let’s try .’ Lots of experimentation and just messing with arrangements — that’s when you’re deep in the songwriting for a new record.

Does the same go for lyric writing for you?

No, I definitely have to force myself to write lyrics. It’s my least favorite thing to do in the whole world. It’s never fun to be able to see the edge of your own intelligence. I think that writing lyrics definitely shows me that cliff where my intelligence drops off into a never-ending pit [Laughs] where you’re like, ‘What’s that word? I want to be more eloquent but I can’t!’ But also, ‘I want to rhyme lines two and four, and I want the words to sound cool.’ If Ozzy taught me anything, it’s [that] words like ‘I’ and ‘fire’ sound cool. So, there’s also a word aesthetic that you pay attention to when you’re singing, like, ‘This just sounds cool in heavy metal to say these kinds of words because [of] the way Ozzy does them,’ you know?

Sonically, when writing and recording ‘Marrow Deep’, was there anything on your mind that you consciously wanted to hone in on when it came to sound and production, or elements that came about that maybe surprised you?

When we went into it, we obviously picked Kurt Ballou for a reason: we wanted to be a heavier version of ourselves that we hadn’t been in a while, and we thought that by working with Kurt, we could get there. That was the only mission statement. But also, I think we’re always searching for a way of clarity, in the instrumentation, and also have a tendency to pile stuff on top of each other, so it almost goes against it. So, we were trying to strike that balance of being able to hear every single little thing that everyone’s doing, and also in different parts, being ‘wall of sound’ and psychedelic. 

When we were trying to introduce another idea to pile on top of something, I think that Kurt and Patrik [Berger] had a good ability to say, ‘Okay, if you’re going to introduce something new, we need to take something away, so do you really want to do that? Let’s figure out what that’s going to be.’ We tried really hard to stick to some ‘less is more’ stuff. I think it worked! Also, peaks and valleys, as far as the quieter moments being as quiet as they can be, and then really building up into these big crescendos; and the heavy parts really having more of an impact due to dynamics. 

Can you remember the first time you heard ‘Marrow Deep’, in full? Was there a moment where you thought, ‘It’s complete, and we can build from there?’

There were a lot of different versions of it that got me really excited. But, I think that once Andrew Sheps had it and had gone through it, given a first pass of his mixes, everybody was really blown away by it. He just had a real good understanding of, like I said, the peaks and valleys and the vocal production, and everything just sounded really awesome when he got involved. I mean, Kurt and Patrik got it to a really, really amazing place, but it took that deft mixing hand of Andrew to really bring it home. Once we got those finals, it was like, ‘Oh, there it is!’

Of course, there’s the obvious emotional connection shared between you all with this album, but thinking back to when the sessions began to today, how do you feel that as a band, you all have evolved into this next phase for Mastodon?

I’m really proud of us and the work on the record, absolutely. I feel like the week we were going in to start working on it, there was a very large cross-section of people that were shoveling dirt on us, and it was hurtful — not to mention, we lost a really close person to us and everything that had transpired beforehand. It didn’t feel good. Not that we didn’t feel like we couldn’t go in and be awesome, but I think it’s just a weird headspace to be in. I’m proud of us for leaning on each other, using the music to get through it and coming out with something that we really love and that we’re really proud of.  

Time helps so much for perspective, and I just feel better as a human. Luckily, time does that: it makes it so that it’s not so difficult; that sort of physical manifestation of grief can really weigh heavy on you, especially in the immediate aftermath of losing someone close to you. But a year later, I think we all feel a lot better. And, I think the record is exemplary of a band really kicking through the dirt that people were trying to shovel on us. [‘Marrow Deep’] wasn’t any kind of ‘prove it’ record, because we know who we are, we get in there and it sounds awesome, what we’re doing. But, we needed it to get through those tough times that were happening right when we went into the studio. So, I’m happy we had it, just on a personal level.

I think that going out now and playing the new stuff for people, at the meet and greets, meeting people in the street and on this tour, I’ve heard so many testimonials from people that have let us know that ‘Marrow Deep’ has really been helping them through whatever hard times they’re going through. That’s the best thing you could ask for is to help somebody through a hard time, with some tunes.

‘Marrow Deep’ is out now.