Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor opened up about the band’s decade-long journey toward parting ways with former guitarist Brent Hinds and the emotional aftermath of his death in a motorcycle accident.
Dailor was asked about coping with Hinds’ passing roughly a year after the tragic accident. The accident came just months after Mastodon split from the guitarist following 25 years together in the band. When asked, “Starting off on a somber note, it’s been roughly a year since Brent Hinds tragically died in a motorcycle accident. Only months earlier, Mastodon had parted ways with him after 25 years in the band. How are you guys coping one year later, and can you talk about the roller coaster of emotions that you experienced from the time you parted ways with Brent through learning of his passing?” Dailor gave a candid response about the long road to that decision and the personal turmoil that followed.
“The decision to part ways was kind of in the making for 10 years,” Dailor said. “But we never really thought it would actually happen until maybe a year prior. It just didn’t seem like he was gonna bounce back, I guess. Or I don’t know what the phrase would be, but he wasn’t into it anymore. And it was kind of painfully obvious.”
Dailor then described how his mother’s death overlapped with the fallout from Hinds’ departure from the band.
“But in between that and then his passing… my mom had just passed, and so I was really more concentrated on that,” he continued. “I was upset about Brent not being in the band anymore, obviously, and reading tidbits here and there about [him calling me a] terrible person and all this stuff. It was hurtful, but at the same time I was more concentrated on what had happened with my mom, and my whole family, and that aspect of my life.”
He went on to reflect on how sudden and painful his mother’s passing had been.
“At that point in time, losing my mom was a really heavy thing, obviously,” Dailor said. “I was lucky enough to have a really close relationship with her, and she was sick for a number of years, but it wasn’t like an illness that was going to claim her. It wasn’t like a long cancer battle or anything like that, so it wasn’t really an expected passing.”
Dailor said he had hoped to eventually reconcile with Hinds, a hope that was cut short by the guitarist’s sudden death.
“But then Brent’s passing was a total shock and just really sucked because as I was trying to deal with my mom’s passing, I was thinking in the back of my mind like, ‘Give it a year and I’ll talk to Brent and we’ll squash all this and it’ll be fine,’” he said.
Dailor recalled the moment the band learned of Hinds’ death while on tour.
“So, it was unexpected and very sad,” he said. “We were playing shows and we had gone over to Europe and we were there for over a month, and I was starting to feel a little bit better from being onstage every night and having the shows go really well. That was exciting, and starting to bring me a little bit out of my funk with my mom. And then when we got to Alaska, it was the last show before we were gonna go into the studio. We got the news when we were at the baggage claim that Brent had passed. And so it was just shocking and sad, and a year later, not a day goes by that we don’t think about him and wish for a better outcome.”
Dailor’s comments, shared via Consequence, arrive against a backdrop that has grown increasingly complicated since Hinds’ exit from the band. That backdrop stretches from the initial split through his death and into an ongoing legal dispute that continues to shadow Mastodon’s future.
Mastodon announced Hinds’ departure in March 2025, framing it publicly as a mutual decision rather than a firing. “Friends and Fans, after 25 monumental years together, Mastodon and Brent Hinds have mutually decided to part ways,” the band wrote at the time. The band added that all touring plans for the year would remain intact. Dailor’s remarks now reveal a far messier reality behind that carefully worded statement. That reality was shaped by years of internal tension that predated the announcement by nearly a decade.
Hinds was killed in Atlanta five months after the split, on August 20, 2025, when he was struck in a motorcycle accident at the age of 51. The loss came at a uniquely difficult moment for Dailor. He was still processing his mother’s death and had privately hoped to repair his relationship with Hinds once enough time had passed. That reconciliation never happened.
The losses of both Hinds and Dailor’s mother have since become the emotional foundation of Mastodon’s upcoming ninth studio album, Marrow Deep. The band has described the album as directly shaped by the grief of that period.
The situation has taken a further turn in recent weeks. Hinds’ estate filed a lawsuit against Mastodon in Fulton County Court in September 2026. The lawsuit alleges that the band never bought out Hinds’ ownership stake before his death and that members used his likeness to promote Marrow Deep without proper compensation. The legal dispute adds another layer of complexity to a relationship that Dailor and his bandmates are still publicly working through. They continue to honor Hinds’ memory on stage and in their music.
