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Credit: Joby Sessions/Future
On Wednesday, August 20, the world of guitar suffered a body blow with the death of Brent Hinds, the fearless, heavily tattooed guitar-slinger who helped lead Mastodon for a quarter century.
A co-founder of Mastodon – along with guitarist Bill Kelliher, bassist Troy Sanders, and drummer Brann Dailor – Hinds was a major figure in pushing metal guitar, and metal as a whole, into uncharted territory in the 21st century – challenging the genre’s rules and conventions with playing that bore the mark of a wide range of influences.
Born in Helena, Alabama in 1974, Hinds was raised around country music and wasn’t shy about incorporating some of its characteristics into his work with the metal trailblazers.
“I’m not a metal guitarist,” he shrugged to Guitar World in 2022. “Sometimes I stumble upon a metal riff and I’ve been influenced by [post-metal] bands like Isis. I get it where I can fit it, but I’m an oddball when it comes to the metal scene. I love country. My favorite country singer/songwriter is Johnny Paycheck and my favorite guitar-playing country artist is Jerry Reed.
“So I try to incorporate some country licks here and there. And sometimes I’m clever enough to find out where they can go in a tasteful manner.”
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Divinations [from Mastodon’s acclaimed 2009 effort, Crack the Skye] is an example of how Hinds’ awe-inspiring, country-indebted hybrid picking style could shape not just a solo or a riff, but an entire song.
In epics such as Roots Remain [from 2017’s Emperor of Sand], he showed his gift for effortlessly hopping between blistering southern-friend pentatonic runs and those elusive held single notes that could make grown men and women weep – a relative rarity when it comes to metal. It was this equal merger of country and blues with heavier styles that made him unique among his peers.
Having the kind of sound I have, when I play and get into it, I get kinda lost, and before I know it 13 or 15 minutes have passed
Brent Hinds
Proof in the pudding can also be found in Hinds’ litany of side projects. Following his departure from the Mastodon stable in early 2025, Hinds tackled his other gigs with renewed focus, even playing with three of his side projects – including Fiend Without A Face, described on their Bandcamp page as “psychobilly surf music with a little country twist” – in a single show.
Described by Kelliher as Mastodon’s “quote-unquote lead guitarist,” Hinds brought his creative restlessness to the band’s songwriting process.
“We’re opposite sometimes,” Kelliher told Guitar World in 2024. “When I write songs I’ll spend months piecing them together, whereas Brent says, ‘Let’s jam and write whatever on the spot in the studio.’”
Hinds himself corroborated this in a 2022 Guitar World interview, saying, “I like to sprawl out in a song. I think living in the city and being cramped around people causes these unconscious decisions for my songwriting. The only case scenario that I have to really spread out is in a song.
“Having the kind of sound I have, when I play and get into it, I get kinda lost, and before I know it 13 or 15 minutes have passed.”
Hinds’ wide-open, freewheeling six-string approach was crucial in taking the band off the beaten path. Of Hinds’ penchant for unexpected leads, Kelliher told GW in 2022, “Once in a while, he’ll hear something in what I’m showing him and he’ll come up with his own interpretation. And sometimes he’ll do something that will totally surprise me.
“Like, I’ll put a bridge in there and I assume he’ll play a solo over that. Then he’ll come in the next day and play his part and when I come back in, I’m blown away when I listen back because he put the solo somewhere entirely different, like over a midsection, which I thought would be instrumental.
“I’ll be like, ‘Whoa, wow! I wouldn’t have put it there, but that’s cool. That sounds killer.’ When it works, it’s a very cool thing to hear because it shines a whole new ray of light on the song.”
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Hinds was open about struggles he had with his mental health and addiction, and how the guitar served as a crucial outlet for him.
“I’ve lived with anxiety for 20 years and I was hooked on Xanax for 15 years and I had to wean myself off of it a little bit at a time ‘cause it was compromising my breathing,” he told GW in 2022.
“Of course, I was partying on it and it’s really bad to do that. I was never prescribed things so I was buying from people on the streets all the time. One time I couldn’t get it and I had two seizures.
“So, I finally weaned myself off. It took years, but recently I discovered that you need to be anxious and fucking deal with it and that keeps you on your toes and motivated to keep doing shit. Now I try to feed off the anxiety and play guitar.”
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Hinds’ tenure in Mastodon came to an abrupt conclusion in March 2025. Though the split initially appeared amicable, fiery social media posts made by the guitarist in the following months hinted that it was not a mutual decision.
Regardless, Hinds’ dynamo, swaggering, and electrifying presence on the guitar will not soon be forgotten.
The joy with which he shattered genre boundaries while riding the waves of guitar inspiration can be found in what he told Guitar World in 2017 while discussing his work with Epiphone on his signature Flying V.
“I emphasized to [Epiphone] that I’m gonna wank, spank, slobber, bleed, bend, crunch, and crush all over this fucking thing and the guitar’s gonna need to be able to handle the monster behind it.”