Connecting generations of metaldom, Bastardane — the project featuring Metallica frontman James Hetfield’s son Castor on drums — have just unveiled a jazz-metal skronk-out that was produced by Gojira leader Joe Duplantier. The new single is called “Mother’s Tongue”
The track marks the band’s first new music since issuing their Catatonic Symphony LP in 2024. Sonically, Bastardane’s new headtrip offers up a mix of super-proggy, clean-channel fretboard adventuring, chromatically swampy moshes and very Hetfield-esque yowls from Castor.
The song was tracked at Joshua Tree, California’s Gatos Trail Recording Studio with Dan Joeright, but likewise features production work from Duplantier. “Mother’s Tongue” was also mixed by Jamie Uertz at Duplantier’s Silver Cord Studio in New York.
You can lap up “Mother’s Tongue” in full via the player up above, while a behind-the-scenes video that sees the band working out the finer points of the arrangement can be found below.
“I don’t know about that half-time weird thing,” Castor Hetfield says to his bandmates at one point, while bassist Jake Dallas jovially notes having “messed up” a few complicated parts in a take, and the band discuss the meaning of the lyrics while coolin’ around an RV.
IN related news, Metallica and Gojira will be teaming up for a European run of the headliners’ ongoing “M72 World Tour” this spring. ‘Tallica also just announced their Las Vegas residency at The Sphere, which takes place this October.