By Jack Rafferty
I’m one of those weirdos who likes Mastodon’s work pre and post Crack The Skye. No sides to be picked here. I acknowledge the differences in sound and understand the preferences people have and why folks have divided opinions, but I don’t know, I just haven’t disliked a single thing they have ever done. I like them when they are aggressive and heavy, I like them when they are spacy and proggy, I like them when they combine the two in variations. There have been albums that I have been a little lukewarm on, but those are rare and I usually end up loving them over time. All this is to say that Mastodon’s music has been a large presence in my life, and it holds a lot of importance to me.
Brent Hinds was an irreplaceable part of that music that is so dear to me. I know there was some bad blood with him leaving the band right before the accident, but I don’t really want to focus on that shit here. What I do want to talk about was Brent’s incredible talent and passion for music, and the ways he impacted my life. Mastodon has sort of followed me through my formative years, and it feels like they have always been there for me in a lot of different ways. I wanted to get this written up in a more timely manner when the incident occurred, but honestly the news of his death just hit me hard, and I felt I needed some time to process it and find the right words before I wrote about it. I’m not in agreement with the ways in which instant reaction and gratification are so demanded these days, so I hope this piece doesn’t feel too delayed.
So much of what initially drew me to Mastodon were the guitar passages. Hearing the lead riffs in “Colony of Birchmen” and “Blood and Thunder” was all I needed to be hooked. I listened to those first few albums on repeat throughout middle and high school. They guided my tastes in music in many ways. Then at some point I bought Crack the Skye and it felt the way some folks talk about Dark Side of the Moon feeling when it first came out. It was like a transcendental experience. Lying in bed at night, I would just stare at the ceiling and listen to that album and feel like I was being transported through a dark and unknowable cosmos. It’s one of my favorite albums of all time.
Crack the Skye also had Brent in a more prominent role on vocals than he had been in previous albums, and I know some people are mixed on it, but I fucking love his voice, and I especially think it fits in the vaster soundscape they cultivated as they moved away from the sludge roots quite a bit on this album. Throughout their discography, though, Brent was a force to be reckoned with on guitar.
Hinds loved country music, especially Johnny Paycheck and Jerry Reed, and I definitely hear a lot of those influences in his playing. It was his roots as a banjo player first that contributed to his unique playing style, and it led to all sorts of bizarrely incredible riffs. For my money, he was honestly one of the best and most inventive guitarists of his day. You don’t have to go beyond the discography of Mastodon to know that, but his work with Fiend Without a Face, West End Motel, Legend of the Seagullmen, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, and his other projects really cement his remarkable range as a musician and vocalist. And his prowess as a guitarist shouldn’t overshadow his vocal ability, because he was such a soulful, bluesy, deeply emotional singer. I remember seeing a video of him covering “Electric Funeral” by Sabbath with Marcus King and doing vocals for it, and thinking “holy shit, Brent could’ve filled in for Ozzy and it would have actually worked pretty well.”
One of my favorite things about Brent was his sense of humor and the levity in which he seemed to approach his life and passion for music. In basically every video you can find of him, he is always goofing around somehow and making people laugh, but also remaining grounded and driven in his work. This is especially true in interviews, where he almost never takes them seriously, and just uses them as excuses to make jokes. His lightheartedness often seemed like a reminder to other folks too caught up in the rat race to take a step back and remember to enjoy life, have a bit of fun, and not be so serious about everything all the time (which in this context is all the more important, given the frailty of things). On top of this, though, Brent seemed to genuinely care about people, and didn’t seem at all interested in superficial bullshit or money.
It’s fuckin sad to think of all the creative potential he had left in him, all the time he still had to break from touring to spend with his wife and his family. I’ll always wonder what cool things he would have gone on to do and create. I’m also left humbled by the legacy that he did leave behind, and the music that will continue to influence folks and be enjoyed by so many for years down the line. You will be missed, Brent.
Spiraling up through the crack in the sky
Leaving the material world behind
I see your face in constellations.
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