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Mastodon explores the heavy side of life in ‘Once More Around the Sun’

Mastodon's new album, "Once More Around the Sun" underlines the complexity of a band that straddles rock and heavy music. Singer-bassist Troy Sanders and Mastodon are set to perform Friday at the Fox Theatre in Pomona.
(Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)
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It’s not every rock band that can be comfortable and accepted at both the Mayhem and Coachella music festivals, playing for metalheads at one, and new music connoisseurs at the other.

For the Atlanta-based Mastodon, it’s the norm as the quartet delivers heavy music of complexity and deep emotion, while exploring sounds that don’t easily fit alongside typical metal fare.

Guitarist Bill Kelliher calls the band “a gateway drug” for the uninitiated to heavy music. “We’re not really a metal band. I feel like we’re more like a really heavy groovy rock band with some prog elements, and some pretty deep emotional lyrics,” he says. “They’re loosely based on tragedy and things that really shake up human beings in real life.”

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The themes are frequently dark, even as the music remains forceful and intricate from the band, which performs Friday at the Fox Theatre in Pomona.

On Mastodon’s new album, “Once More Around the Sun,” the drama unfolds amid a thunderous swirl of sound led by the guitars of Kelliher and Brent Hinds, and the complex beats of drummer Brann Dailor.

Singer-bassist Troy Sanders sees the album as a kind of musical survey of the band’s evolution, with individual tracks that echo the super-heavy “Remission” album from 2003, the technical intricacies of 2009’s “Crack the Skye,” and the more direct hard rock approach of 2011’s “The Hunter.”

The group opens its sixth full-length release with a disarming 12-string acoustic melody before swelling into a crushing storm. Sanders then establishes a theme, roaring: “Open your eyes / Take a deep breath and return to life / Wake up and fight / Fight for the love and the burning light.”

So often for Mastodon, the lyrics are as heavy as the music and generally non-fiction. The band’s 2009 “Crack the Skye” album was inspired by the suicide of Dailor’s sister, Skye, and the new album comes from a similar place.

“For us, it always seems that there’s some kind of tragedy surrounding every album that feeds it,” says Dailor, preferring not to elaborate on personal details. “That’s nothing I would ever wish for or want. Unfortunately, it just comes out of nowhere: OK, I guess that’s what I’m writing about.”

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The making of “Once More Around the Sun” was no different, fueled by a year of real-life crises faced by band members, including the fresh sobriety of Kelliher. The opening track began as a guitar riff that Kelliher had been tinkering with for years until Dailor provided the lyrics.

“That was real emotional and it brought tears to my eyes the first time I was listening to it,” Kelliher says. “That’s when I realized it was about Brann’s mom. He was by her bedside and she was in a coma.”

After recording his drums and vocal parts at a studio just outside Nashville, Dailor headed often back to his boyhood home in upstate New York to be with his ailing mother.

“We’re not really good at just making stuff up when it comes to emotion,” Kelliher says of Mastodon songs. “Telling a story is one thing, but when you’re screaming into a microphone to ‘Open your eyes, see the light, come back to life’ — that really happened. Brann’s mother was in the hospital dying of a brain injury, and he was trying to get her to open her eyes and shake her. People can see that when they read the lyrics. They feel it.”

The band was formed in 2000, and quickly built a reputation for meaningful hard rock that was smart and dependably loud and soaring. It was as cathartic for the band as for Mastodon’s audience.

“Very heavy music isn’t what I would listen to all the time, but I sure enjoy playing it all the time,” says Sanders. “It’s a very unique release, and it’s a wonderful platform for emotional output for me.”

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Loudness offers a similar comfort to Dailor. “That’s why we have the band,” he says. “That’s why I have the drums. When I was a little kid, I would get really frustrated. My mom always told me to play my drums. That always helped.”

Kelliher admits to looking online to see how fans are reacting; not to make adjustments in Mastodon’s plans but merely to check the pulse of their audience. “We’re not going to please all the people all of the time on anything,” he says, even if certain die-hard fans follow wherever the band leads. “Thank God for them,” Kelliher says.

Others are more particular, and while each new album may cause some fans to lose interest, others are pulled in. The band’s intention is to evolve, not to repeat itself.

The thunderous, operatic metal of “Diamond in the Witch House” closes the album at Black Sabbath-scale, with guest Scott Kelly of Neurosis singing of the ebb and flow of human suffering: “Trouble rolls in / As the tides, they twist and make the turn / Pain subsides / And sweeps across the earth again.”

It’s a subject that offers a dependable source of inspiration.

“We’ve hit some sweet spots,” Dailor says of the band’s music. “We’ve gone deeper than anyone ever thought we’d go. You think you hit the bottom of it, and then you get a little bit beneath that.”

steve.appleford@latimes.com

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Mastodon, with Gojira and Kvelertak

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday

Where: Fox Theatre, 301 S. Garey Ave., Pomona

Info: https://www.ticketmaster.com

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