Troy Sanders and Mastodon Drop “Medium Rarities”
Mastodon is in the process of working on new material, but until that’s done they’re keeping up their momentum with Medium Rarities. The 16-song album is a collection of live cuts, B-sides, instrumentals, and covers that the band picked from their back catalog for their fans. Bassist and vocalist Troy Sanders explained the release in an interview with Mxdwn.
“Number one: we realized that we had a collection of live songs, instrumentals and these covers, that have never been released properly through digital formats,” he explained. “There’s 10 to 13 songs that we all really like and unless you purchased these limited edition vinyls that come out on Record Store Day and such, you don’t have access to them. So, we wanted to put them all in one big collection. And, along with the new song ‘Fallen Torches’ that we recorded not too long ago, we thought that would be a healthy portion of tunes for our fans. And releasing it now timing-wise makes sense, because Emperor of Sand came out in March 2017 and our new record won’t see light until 2021. This will hopefully be some fresh Mastodon sounds to hold our fans over, or anyone that cares for us.”
Some of the deep cuts include “Cut You Up With a Linoleum Knife” from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, “White Walker” from Game of Thrones, and “Atlanta” from the Adult Swim Singles Collection. The band also pulled out a handful of cover songs by Feist, The Flaming Lips, and Metallica. (Be sure to check out Sanders taking on “Orion”.) The decidedly non-metal covers are part of the band’s DNA, Sanders said.
“When our band formed and we all met each other years ago, one of the main reasons that brought us all together was that, once we befriended each other, we would look through each other’s CD booklets that we all had, and right away we knew we could co-exist in a musical creative world because all four of us have a very wide appreciation of all styles of music,” he said.
Check out their latest original song, “Fallen Torches”:
Medium Rarities is available now on CD, vinyl and as a digital download (iTunes and Amazon MP3).
Medium Rarities Track List:
- Fallen Torches
- A Commotion
- Asleep in the Deep
- Capillarian Crest
- A Spoonful Weighs a Ton
- Toe to Toes
- Circle of Cysquatch
- Atlanta (feat. Gibby Haynes)
- Jaguar God
- Cut You Up with a Linoleum Knife
- Blood & Thunder
- White Walker
- Halloween
- Crystal Skull
- Orion
- Iron Tusk
