Blood of the MASTODON?

We all know Brent Hinds is a weird guy. But nothing can be weirder that his recent actions at shows of late which showed the hairy co-frontman/co-guitarist ating more erratic and showing signs that perhaps the pressure is getting to him. On top of Bill Kelliher getting sidetracked due to pancreatitis, and having an all-around douchebag like Troy Sanders around, it's likely that Mastodon may in fact be crumbling and tearing at the seams. Trouble in paradise, no doubt.

Here's an eyewitness account of Hinds's actions at this past weekend's show in Oakland that has some people wondering about Hinds and his state of mental health.




“Brent seemed off from the beginning, staggering a bit and not stepping up to sing his lines. I’m pretty sure he damn near collapsed at least once. Troy once ran to the mic, nearly pushing Brent over, in an effort to sing Brent’s lines. Brent continued to throw in wild solos where there should be words, throwing his guitar around and running off stage. While there seemed to be major technical issues, mostly with his monitor from what I could tell, he became less and less involved in the performance to the point where he even stopped playing and simply yelled in to the mic something around the lines of ‘I love heavy metal…..No I don’t.’ Even more telling, he managed to screw up the intro to a song (that I can’t remember right now) to the point where Brann was looking through his cymbals in hopes of figuring out what was happening. He eventually completely lost his composure, throwing down a mic stand and storming off stage.

After roughly a 20 minute delay consisting of the keyboard player playing the same three notes for 10 minutes, and then realizing issues and perhaps showing more professionalism than I thought possible for a stand-in, started changing things up, trying different chords and rhythms, anything to try to keep the crowd from losing their interest completely. The band finally re-took the stake, sans Brent, thanked the audience for being there, and asked if we wanted one more. Bringing out another mic stand, Bill sang backups to ”Blood and Thunder” and gracefully let the show die out into the night with no trace of Brent.”