MASTODON Plans On Recording Their Cover Of BLACK SABBATH's "Supernaut"

At this year's Bloodstock Open Air festival in the U.K., Mastodon's Brann Dailor and Bill Kelliher sat down with Bloodstock TV's Oran O'Beirne to discuss their once-in-a-lifetime experience performing at the Back To The Beginning event, a monumental tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath.

Dailor revealed that Mastodon had known about the tribute show roughly six months in advance. "Maybe there was an original six bands that got chosen or whatever before some other bands got added later. And so we got an e-mail asking about it, if we were interested," he recalled.

"At first it was, like, 'Are you sure? Are you sure you don't have the wrong people or something?' Our manager actually joked that it was the fastest reply that they had ever gotten from us collectively."

Kelliher added with a laugh: "We replied, like, I think 0.10 seconds before they actually asked us to do it. We had already replied 'yes.'"

For Dailor, the opportunity to be part of the farewell tribute to Sabbath was greater than any accolade Mastodon has received so far. "It was probably the honor of a lifetime to be asked to perform at Back To The Beginning," he said. "It's better than a Grammy. It's better than anything that anybody could ever bestow upon you to be called upon by the giant oak tree that is Black Sabbath. In other genres of music, the founders, they're not alive. So it was really, really an incredible honor just to be picked to do it."

But with the honor came a challenge: choosing which Sabbath song to perform. Bill Kelliher explained how Mastodon landed on their setlist choice: "'Supernaut', I've loved that song.

"I mean, all their songs are great, but that one – I couldn't imagine coming to practice one day as [Sabbath guitarist] Tony Iommi and saying, 'I've got a good riff, man. You guys wanna see what I've got,' and playing that riff, and just being like… You must have sold your soul to learn that riff. The devil gave you that riff. So to see that it wasn't chosen yet was — 'That's the one. Let's do that.'"

Dailor had initially set his sights on "Children of the Grave," which he felt suited Mastodon's love for 6/8 tempo grooves. But with Lamb of God claiming that track, "Supernaut" quickly became the perfect choice: "I felt like I could sing it, so it was kind of gonna come down to that, if I could pull it off, playing drums and singing it. And then when we got picked to open, I was, like, 'Man, I think if we crush this, it's gonna be the perfect opening kind of song.' Some of the doomier ones might have been a little too slow to really kick things off. But this was the perfect one, I think."

The performance went so well that fans are already wondering if Mastodon will record their version of "Supernaut." Kelliher admitted the idea is on the table: "Not yet, but we've been talking about it, for sure. We have to. We've been playing it every night. We've recorded it a few times live, and it's come out… Who knows? Maybe we'll do a live version, do a studio version."

Dailor confirmed: "We're definitely recording it."