Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor has opened up about the emotional weight of performing without Brent Hinds following his exit from the band and his subsequent passing.
Dailor reflected on the surreal experience of losing a bandmate after years of unresolved tension. He described the grief that comes with seeing someone out of the corner of your eye — only to remember they are gone.
“I think most people, if you existed in close quarters with somebody for many, many years, and they pass, you see them out of the corner of your eye,” Dailor said. “Your eye plays tricks on you, and for a second, you go, ‘Oh,’ and then you remember that they’re gone.”
He went on to address the difficult circumstances surrounding Hinds’ death. The band had hoped to reconcile before it was too late.
“And it’s a bummer for sure because we had some turmoil before he passed, and so it’s the worst-case scenario, really,” Dailor continued. “Because I think that all of us really thought that ‘[We’ll] take a breather here, and at some point down the road, we’ll get back together. And I don’t know if we’re gonna play together, but we’re gonna talk. We’re gonna hash this out and squash everything.'”
Dailor then spoke to the depth of the bond shared between the members of Mastodon. That bond was built over more than two decades on the road together.
“We’re brothers. We’re family. It’s 26 years of touring the world, playing all over the place, living in a bus with each other, living in a van with each other,” he said. “I mean, sleeping on floors, you name it. Every single thing you could go through with another human being… But then you make really incredible art with that person too. So that brings your relationship to another place, when you really create something that you all really, really love, and you go out and play for people.”
Shifting to the present, Dailor described how he thinks of Hinds during live performances. He noted this feeling is especially strong when playing songs tied to Hinds’ legacy.
“I think of him on stage these days or during this tour, not only with the song [‘Your Ghost Again’] that we’ve been playing off the new album, but songs that he wrote that we’re playing,” Dailor said. “And I sort of get more overcome with a feeling of gratitude to him…”
He concluded by highlighting specific songs that carry Hinds’ creative fingerprint. For Dailor, the band’s continued performance of them is a form of tribute.
“We wrote all these songs together, but there’s stuff like ‘Megalodon’ or the song ‘Crack The Skye’, which we’ve put our hearts and souls into those songs together, and he wrote a lot of really incredible riffs,” Dailor said. “And so the gratitude is to him for creating these things that we get to honor him by playing them and keeping those songs alive and going, which I know that he would’ve wanted that.”
Mastodon has been honoring Hinds’ contributions throughout their current tour. The band continues to keep his musical legacy alive through the songs they shared.
The grief Dailor describes is inseparable from the complicated history that preceded Hinds’ death — a history marked by a public split, a disputed narrative, and a tragedy that left no room for resolution.
Hinds died on August 20, 2025, at the age of 51, following a motorcycle accident in Atlanta, Georgia. He was riding a Harley-Davidson when a BMW SUV struck him at an intersection after the driver failed to yield. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A subsequent police investigation estimated Hinds was traveling at approximately 63 to 68 mph at the time of the crash. At least one witness disputed the question of right-of-way, complicating the initial accounts of the incident.
The circumstances of his departure from Mastodon added another layer of pain to the loss. In March 2025, the band announced that they had mutually decided to part ways with Hinds. Hinds publicly rejected that framing in the weeks before his death. He stated plainly that he had been kicked out of the band. The contradiction between the two accounts was never resolved, and his passing ensured it never would be.
In the immediate aftermath of his death, Mastodon released a statement expressing that the band was engulfed in a profound state of sadness and sorrow. At their first live performance following the news, Dailor addressed the crowd directly. He described Hinds as very special and called him one of the most creative people they had ever known. The moment underscored just how much weight the band was carrying as they chose to continue performing.
Hinds was a founding member of Mastodon and one of the primary architects of the band’s sound across more than two decades. His guitar work on albums such as Crack the Skye and The Hunter helped define a generation of progressive metal. His riffs remain central to the band’s live set. For Dailor and his bandmates, playing those songs now is not simply a performance — it is an act of remembrance for a brother they never got the chance to make things right with.
