Brent Hinds, who sang and touched the guitar in the Grammy Mastodon metal band until he left the group this year, died Wednesday night in a motorcycle accident in Atlanta. He was 51 years old.
His death was reported by Wanf de Atlanta, who cited a police report that said that Hinds was riding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle when he was beaten by a SUV whose driver had not yielded while taking a turn. Hinds was declared dead on the scene, police said.
In an Instagram post, the former Hinds bandmates said they were “in a state of sadness and pain” and that “they were still trying to process the loss of this creative force with whom we have shared so many triumphs, milestones and the creation of music that has touched the hearts of so many.”
Known for its complicated Riffs and its narration of high concept stories, Mastodon built a large and devoted audience with intricately drawn albums on diseases, suicide and “Moby-Dress”. The band's music was clearly inspired by Black Sabbath and Slayer and influenced later metal acts such as the baroness and carrier.
However, Bill Kelliher, the other Mastodon guitarist, said: “We are not really a metal band,” during an interview with The Times in 2017. “I feel that we are more like a really heavy and wonderful rock band with some elements of progress and some quite deep emotional lyrics. They are based on tragedy and things that really shake human beings in real life.”
Mastodon was formed in 2000 and made two albums for the respected Indie Relapse Records, including the “Moby-Deck” of 2004, “Leviathan”, which Hinds told the New York Times ralls “the fight between man and music”, before signing to the printing of the Warner music printing press for the “Blood Mountain” of 2006 Grammia nomination for the best metal performance.
The band, in which Hinds, bassist Troy Sanders and drummer Brann Dailor took turns as the main singer, made five LP more for repetition; “Sultan's Curse”, by “Emperor of Sand” of 2017, won a Grammy for the best metal performance. The most recent Mastodon album, “Hushed and Grim”, came out in 2021.
Hinds grew in Birmingham, Alabama, where he learned to play the banjo before resorting to the guitar. In a 2009 interview with The Guardian, he described his youngest self as “a total dining room” and said it was “very dysfunctional in school.” He added that “it would take LSD and would still stumble. It was too creative, never doing my homework, just filled my notes with skull drawings.”
He met Sanders when the latter came to Birmingham to play with a previous band; Hinds soon moved to Atlanta to make music with Sanders, then the two formed mastodon with Kelliher and Dailor. In 2009, Mastodon played the Coachella Festival and toured Metallica; Six years later, Hinds appeared as an extra in an episode of “Game of Thrones” of HBO.
In March, Mastodon announced that Hinds had left the band in a statement that said “they had decided to separate.” However, Hinds later wrote on Instagram that his former bandmates, whom he called “horrible humans”, had fired him “for embarrassing them for being who I am.” He then accused them of using Auto-Tune in the study and said that “he had never met three people who were so full of themselves.”
Information about Hinds survivors was not immediately available.
