Atlanta progressive metallers
MASTODON performed the song
"Divinations" live on last night's (Thursday, October 30) edition of
NBC-TV's
"Late Night with Jimmy Fallon". Watch video of the performance below.
MASTODON has written the score to
"Jonah Hex", the comic-book Western/horror film starring
Josh Brolin in the lead role, with support from
John Malkovich,
Megan Fox,
Will Arnett,
Michael Fassbender and
Michael Shannon. The movie is based on the
DC comic series about a horribly scarred antihero who is "a rough-and-tumble gunslinger and part-time bounty hunter whose adventures always ended in blood."
MASTODON guitarist/vocalist
Brent Hinds makes a cameo appearance in the film, which is being directed by former
Pixar animator
Jimmy Hayward for a June 18, 2010 release.
As
MASTODON bassist
Troy Sanders told
Paste magazine, creating a film score wasn't entirely different from the band's usual songwriting process. "Since day one, we've always written albums thinking the music was the score of a movie,"
Sanders said. "Then we'll create the lyrics or story line on top of that, as if we're writing the dialogue to match the movie's cinematography."
Regarding how much the band was paid to contribute to the film,
Sanders revealed it was "basically nothing."
"[The movie budget] covered our studio fees, but it was a break even deal," he said. "
Malkovich,
Brolin and
Megan Fox all took pay cuts to be a part of this movie — that alone speaks volumes about how much people care about this film."
"I guarantee an incredibly popular misconception will be, 'Oh my god, they're selling out doing a fucking comic-book movie. They probably got a huge paycheck and don't give a shit about integrity,'"
Sanders continued. "The fact is the exact opposite. We sacrificed another two weeks away from home to give away an album's worth of material for nothing in return but satisfaction in being a part of something incredible."
MASTODON wrote about an hour's worth of music, all instrumental, including five full songs and many smaller musical themes adapted throughout. Some of the material,
Sanders said, will likely be adapted for the
London Orchestra for particularly epic scenes. "We wrote variations on themes for each character, different variables for a bunch of riffs: faster, slower, heavier, lighter,"
Sanders said. "It's the
Darth Vader approach."
Read more from
Paste magazine.