Mastodon vocalist/guitarist Bill Kelliher has paid tribute to his former bandmate Brent Hinds.
Hinds, 51, was killed in a traffic accident on August 20 in his adopted hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. The guitarist was riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle when a BMV SUV failed to stop at an intersection, causing the fatal collision. Hinds had parted company with Mastodon in March.
Posting on his instagram account, Bill Kelliher admits, "It’s been hard to get a grip on my emotions this week.
"We had our good and bad times just like in any relationship. All that we accomplished after that first fistfight in the van 25 years ago. I didn’t think you’d be taken from us like this, absolute loss of a true one of a kind guitar wizard extraordinaire. Keeping up with you taught me a lot. You were a brother, we were a family, you were a wild man not to be tamed, you could f*ck up bowling ball with a feather.
"You weren’t perfect," Kelliher's post concluded, "but you were always DIRTY-B!! Your vagabond/gypsy/wild child lives on through your music, I will miss your crazy ass Manimal."
Last Friday, August 22, at the end of Mastodon’s set at the Alaska State Fair, drummer Brann Dailor stepped out from behind his drumkit to speak emotionally about his former bandmate.
The drummer said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): "We lost somebody very special to us yesterday. Brent Hinds, 25 years with us as our guitar player, one of the most creative, beautiful people that we've ever come across in this world, tragically left us. Very, very unfortunate.
“We loved him so, so, so very much. And we had the ups and downs of a 25-year relationship... It's not always perfect, it’s not always amazing, but we were brothers to the end. And we really loved each other and we made a lot, a lot of very beautiful music together. And I think that that’s gonna stand the test of time, evidenced by you people here tonight.
“So we will continue to play Brent’s beautiful, beautiful music that he helped us make, that we formed this band together and traveled the world together, slept in a van together, laid our heads down on beds of fucking kitty litter, got way too drunk to remember anything the next day about a thousand, million times over and over again with the love that we shared and the beauty, all the audiences that we played, for all the stages we stepped on.
"I don't know. We're just at a loss for words. We're absolutely devastated and crushed to lose him and to be able to never have him back again. But you guys made it okay for us to come on stage and do this tonight. So that was for fucking Brent, okay?! Thank you guys so much.”
Mastodon are currently working on the follow-up to 2021's Hushed and Grim album.
