Every once and a while a band comes along, moves in and changes forever the entire landscape of a particular musical genre. Six years back, Atlanta’s Mastodon picked up an increasingly anachronistic metal scene and dumped it right onto its rumpled and bloody ear. The band’s second full-length release, 2004’s “Leviathan” — a concept album based on “Moby Dick,” Herman Melville’s tale of unrequited revenge — took Mastodon to critical heights and earned the quartet a new and expanded fan base (For example, Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith are two of their biggest fans, and Mrs. Smith was spotted at the Star Bar in Atlanta recently during a set of guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds’ side-project, Fiend Without a Face).

But despite its critical and commercial success, the band has no plans to change their ship’s course. Early on, Mastodon earned its reputation as a relentlessly touring and jaw-dropping live act, and they plan on keeping it that way. And they’ve shared the stage with a few giants: Queens of the Stone Age, Slayer, Neurosis and Ozzy Osbourne, to name a few.

Behind Mastodon’s impressive technicality and thunderous chops is Hinds, the invidiously talented guitarist, vocalist and co-songwriter. Dry Ink caught up with him at El Myr, his favorite watering hole in Little Five Points just days before he left for Seattle to record the band’s follow-up to “Leviathan” and first with new label Warner Bros.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of Dry Ink interviews featuring some of our favorite personalities in our favorite bars. “Drinks With” will appear in every issue as long as we can continue to convince our interview subjects to pick up the tab.

Dry Ink: I figure I should tell you that this is the first ever “Drinks With” interview in the very first issue of Dry Ink Magazine, so you should feel pretty special. Not to put any pressure on you or anything, but I hope you can provide us with an interesting story.

Brent Hinds: I’m going to give you a great story. I could go all night. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I think about the past and I’m excited about the future.

DI: Well maybe we should get some drinks first. It might make this a little easier.

BH: Yes and some whiskey.

(Two pints of Guinness and two shots of Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey).

DI: The interview is already going smoother. So how many years now has Mastodon been together?

BH: We are 6-years-old.

DI: And how many shows would you say you’ve played?

BH: A couple of thousand, I think.

DI: Very impressive, sounds like an amazing journey?

BH: Yes, we’ve been up and down the highways of this country a million times. We’ve been to Europe now 12 times and Japan twice. I went to a keg throwing contest in Iceland and lost my shoes in Poland. I’ve got a lot of sky miles. I’m never home. I sleep on a futon when I’m home and it’s horrible. It’s the most uncomfortable thing in the world. I guess it’s good I don’t sleep on it much.

DI: Congratulations on all of your success so far and I hope that it is continued.

BH: It’s hard work but we’re having a blast. I’ll drink to that. Cheers. We all get along very well as a band so that makes it a lot easier. It’s easy to get on stage when you play with the best drummer in the world. God, Tullamore Dew goes down nice.

DI: And how is the Guinness?

BH: Great, I love beer, all flavors and kinds.

DI: So what are your releases up to date?

BH: We put out an EP, “Life’s Blood.” Then we put out two full lengths, “Remission” and “Leviathan” on Relapse Records. We’ve also put out a few 7-inch singles and have been on several compilation and tribute albums.

DI: I’ve really enjoyed your videos. I love the video you guys did for “Blood & Thunder” off of “Leviathan.”

BH: Yeah that was a good time, it was crazy. We shot it at the Star Bar in Atlanta. We’re friends with the owners, so they let us do whatever we wanted with the place. We performed in front of a bunch of drunken clowns and we were dressed as Shriners. There was a bearded lady and a cowboy clown. I wear a fez regularly anyway. I’m a big fan of Shriners. We just told our friends and fans to come down to the bar dressed as clowns. It was fun.

DI: I was down at the video shoot for your new video “Seabeast” (currently making its rounds on MTV and MTV2) a few weeks ago. I saw boats and ballerinas?

BH: Yeah, our friend Jim Stacy built us a boat. He’s in a bunch of our videos. There are ballerinas dancing around this boat and a bunch of evil sea creatures. It looks like an elementary school play. It’s just a bunch of sexy ballerinas dancing around a boat. They’re all beautiful, not a chubby one among them. We’re playing behind a curtain in a few shots. But mostly it’s the ballerinas and creatures.
Let’s get another drink.

DI: Okay.

(Another round of Guinness and Tullamore Dew).

DI: Tell me about Paul Romano.

BH: Paul Romano is an artist from Philadelphia. He’s the guy that does all of our art work. He’s amazing.

DI: Yeah he is. How did you guys hook up?

BH: He contacted us. He heard our songs from the first record and contacted us.

DI: He’s very humble. I met him the other night and told him how much I loved the “Leviathan” cover. He said he didn’t think it was that good.

BH: Oh, he’s just being modest. He is brilliant. He’s in town listening to our demos so he could come up with an idea for the cover of our next record.

DI: And you’re going out of town soon to record another album?

BH: Yes, we’ll be out of town living in Seattle from Feb. 15 through Apr. 5 recording our new record.

DI: Congratulations, I understand you just signed to Warner Bros. So this record will be for them?

BH: Yes we did and yes it will. We’ve got most of the songs written already. We’ve got to iron a few things out but it’s coming together. I still have to write a few more songs for it. It’s going to be called “Monte Sangre” or something like that, which means Blood Mountain in Spanish. It will be very mythological. Hopefully, the album will come out in June and then we’ll hit the road again. Then we’re back in business. We’ll just repeat the same process we’ve been doing already.

DI: The few snippets I’ve heard of your new songs sound amazing.

BH: Thank you. I’m happy with most of it, but I want to be 100 percent happy with all of it. So we have some work to do before we go into the studio.

DI: And what about your new DVD that just came out? Can you talk about that?

BH: Yea, “The Workhorse Chronicles.” Relapse Records put it out. It just shows live footage of us from our first shows in front of seven people to now playing in front of thousands and thousands. It shows all of our videos too. There are interviews with each band member and it shows how we are in real life. I’m in the shower a lot. I like to jump in the pool of life and experience everything. It’s over five hours of Mastodon.

DI: Well, you guys have had a busy year, a busy few years.

(The waitress brings two shots of Jameson Irish whiskey that we didn’t order, and we oblige the offer by drinking the shots immediately.)

BH: Yeah, we have, time flies. We’re doing what we love and traveling, and getting drunk all over the world.

DI: I guess I just want to say a big thanks to you, (guitarist) Bill (Kelliher), (drummer) Brann (Daillor) and (bassist/vocalist) Troy (Sanders) for putting out such fantastic and interesting music. Any success you receive is well deserved.

BH: It’s our pleasure.

DI: So, where do we go from here?

BH: Let’s grab a seat at the bar and get a drink.

Tom Cheshire is the publisher of Dry Ink. Write to him at tom@dryinkmag.com