Heavy metal outfit Mastodon have about “20 rough songs” recorded, according to their guitarist Bill Kelliher, who stated that these tracks were recorded for a new album. Kelliher publicized these recordings in a recent interview with the RRBG podcast, and also revealed that the band will have a new song in the upcoming film Bill and Ted Face the Music, which will be released in August.

Kelliher explained that many of these recordings were created prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, before the virus put this recording on hold. The band announced that they had plans to finish up work on an album last fall, however the band were silent on further developments after this announcement in May.

“Mastodon hasn’t worked since last summer,” Kelliher stated in the podcast. “We’ve been taking this time off to relax and to write a new record, and we were kind of right in the middle of it… we had about, I don’t know, 20 rough songs recorded right before this [pandemic] hit and it just totally put the brakes on it.”

Kelliher also explained that these 20 recordings do not include the songs written by the band’s drummer Brent Hinds, who also serves as a songwriter for the band alongside the rest of its members. “We still don’t have all of Brent’s songs in there yet and there’s still a lot of time for that stuff to change and to morph into other stuff,” Kelliher explained.

Hinds has reportedly been working on “over two hours of song ideas” for an upcoming collaborative project alongside High On Fire’s Matt Pike. The duo first teased this collaboration in February, which was later confirmed in an interview this May.

Check out the podcast below:

Photo Credit: Boston Lynn Schulz