Mastodon and Lamb of God released a new single titled ‘Floods of Triton’ yesterday, on September 12.
The bands recorded ‘Floods of Triton’ at Mastodon’s West End Sound studio in Atlanta right before they kicked off their ‘Ashes of Leviathan’ tour. Tyler Bates, who has worked on film scores for ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ‘John Wick,’ produced the track with Mastodon.
“We [in Mastodon] were just talking about the possibility of doing more collaborations because we don’t do it enough and it’s a fun thing to do,” drummer Brann Dailor mentioned about the single’s creation in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
“We had the tour coming up, so [Lamb of God] were at the forefront of my mind,” he recalled. “We had the main two riffs of the song since about 2006, which maybe ironically is when our two bands first legitimately toured together. So, we had this song, and we thought Randy’s [Blythe] voice would be perfect on it. I thought it would be a really cool thing to cement our friendship even further.”
Randy Blythe said in the same interview that he wrote about 80% of the lyrics while he and Troy Sanders worked together to finish them.
“We didn’t map the song out beforehand,” the frontman shared. “It was once we were in the studio that we discussed where things would go. I believe I wrote, ‘See beauty in destruction.’ And then Troy had the other line, ‘The sea beast laid to rest,’ which of course is references a Lamb of God song and a Mastodon song. So, it was very much a collaborative arrangement, even once the base of the song was in place. It was vocally collaborative as well.”
Lamb of God and Mastodon wrapped up their ‘Ashes of Leviathan’ tour in Omaha, Nebraska, on August 31. They celebrated the 20th anniversary of ‘Leviathan’ and ‘Ashes of the Wake’ albums, which came out on the same day in 2004.