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"I become a monster ready to crush people and drop jaws." |
TROY SANDERS DELIVERS BOTTOM END THUNDER WITH MASTODON BY FERRANTE
Formed in 2000, Atlanta’s Mastodon has been on a wild ride following their musical muse or in their case chasing after the Great White Whale. The band’s Relapse Records release Leviathan, based on the classic Herman Melville novel Moby Dick, is a collection of expertly crafted musical muscle filled with massive riffs, complex rhythm patterns, distorted, driving bass lines, and aggressive vocal stylings.
“We are a band of traveling rock and roll pirates, states Sanders. “We get tagged with our own genre of music - whale core, mammoth metal, elephant rock. When I strap on my bass my alter-ego kicks in and I become a monster ready to crush people and drop jaws. I use my bass to lay down a solid layer of thunder.”
 A self–taught, finger-style player, Sanders grew up jamming along to the music of Guns and Roses, Van Halen, and Kiss. “My approach to bass is very punk rock. I follow the common role of the bass player by locking into a solid bottom-end groove with Brann (drummer). Depending on the song, I will double the guitar parts to reinforce the strength of the riff or for cleaner parts with less riffage, I like to create movement in the bass line to add breath to the song. It can be easy to overplay in Mastodon because there is so much engery coming from the drums but I try to keep it as simple as possible. Brann (drummer) creates the bed frame and I am the heavy-metal mattress!” “Originally Mastodon had a singer, but when he left we decided to stay a four piece so I had to pick up some of the vocal slack. Singing and playing bass simultaneously was much more challenging when I first began than it is now. When the phrasing and melody of the lyrics differs from that of the bass line, it adds another dimension and layer to the music. The track “I Am Ahab” from Leviathan is a good example of one such song. We write the lyrics and melodies after the music is completed
and then I learn how to actually play both live.”
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