mastodon once more round the sun wallpaper

Living this lifestyle that we’ve chosen, sometimes the ship goes out of control.” Ultimately everything fell into place and it worked it out great, but it wasn’t always easy to see that at the time. “Deep in my addiction I was thinking, ‘I can’t go away to rehab, what’s the band going to do? What’s my family going to do?’ You think the world will collapse and everyone will be like ‘Aww, we need Bill, he’s our man.’ But that’s not the way life works. “The world doesn’t stop turning when you step off,” Bill says quietly, twisting his wedding ring as he speaks. When he returned to Atlanta six weeks later, he was dismayed to discover that the band he’d founded had already booked studio time in Los Angeles to record an album largely written in his absence. In the spring of 2011, as Brent, Brann and vocalist/bassist Troy Sanders began the process of piecing together material for Mastodon’s fifth album The Hunter, the guitarist checked himself into a rehab facility to address his addictions. His bandmates were understanding – fellow guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds had his own on-going battle with drug and alcoholic addiction drummer Brann Dailor, Bill’s oldest friend from Rochester, was raised in a family torn apart by substance abuse – but Bill was ashamed of his own behaviour.

This wake-up call only temporarily curtailed his drinking: 18 months later, the band were forced to cancel a European summer festival run when his condition flared up again. In November 2008, while Mastodon toured Europe with Slayer, the guitarist was hospitalised for two weeks in London with acute pancreatitis brought on by heavy alcohol abuse: his doctors said he was lucky to be alive.

Mastodon once more round the sun wallpaper