Atlanta progressive metallers MASTODON have tapped Brendan O'Brien (AC/DC, PEARL JAM, VELVET REVOLVER) to produce their next album. The band is scheduled hit the studio this week to begin recording the follow-up to the Grammy-nominated 2006 release "Blood Mountain".

In a recent interview with UK's Rock Sound magazine, MASTODON drummer Brann Dailor stated about the songwriting process for the group's new album, "It's a long, arduous process. We've got a skeleton for the whole record and these huge chunks of music four of five different segments that don't have a beginning or end yet... We're just basically in the middle of the record, adding stuff, giving it a taste then adding a little more 'pepper' or 'salt.' Once all the ingredients are in there, you have to bake it — which is just playing it over and over again until it feels right. The main goal is to get the songs right so you don't have to think about the time changes — so you can relax with it and play it how it should be played. There's a level of difficulty to our stuff and if you're too wrapped up in trying to remember how many times something goes and the timing for the next riff, you can't examine the song for being a song. So it takes a while."

MASTODON will take part in the inaugural Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival tour, which is scheduled to start July 9 in Seattle and play 30 cities. MASTODON will also team up with SLAYER, TRIVIUM and an as-yet-undisclosed opening act will team up for "The Unholy Alliance: Chapter III" European tour in the fall. So far only one date has been revealed: November 10, 2008 at Eishalle Deutweg in Winterthur, Switzerland.