Mastodon Return With Tribute to Brent Hinds on “Your Ghost Again”

Mastodon have released “Your Ghost Again,” their first new music since the death of founding guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds last August. Hinds left the band in early 2024, five months before dying in a motorcycle crash. The single now lands as a direct memorial, with bassist Troy Sanders and drummer Brann Dailor handling all vocal parts.

Dailor, who also lost his mother recently, shaped the song around the experience of encountering absence in everyday spaces. “I kept seeing Brent,” he said in a statement, describing moments in the studio when he would glimpse someone who wasn’t there. The track builds on that feeling, not as a narrative but as a reaction to a specific kind of private quiet, the sudden jolt of recognition followed by its quick dissolve.

The band recorded the song with producers Patrik Berger and Kurt Ballou, bringing in guitarist Nick Johnston as their newest member. It points toward a full album, the follow-up to 2021’s Hushed and Grim, though no further details on that project have been confirmed.

Alongside the single, Mastodon added a run of North American dates to an already busy European summer. The itinerary now stretches from June festivals in Prague, Nürburgring, and Donington to September shows in Orlando, Brooklyn, and beyond, closing in early October with Boise and a yet-to-be-finalized date. The full schedule is available on the band’s site.