Legend of the Seagullmen — the nautically themed supergroup featuring Mastodon’s Brent Hinds, Tool’s Danny Carey, Dethklok’s Pete Griffin and others — are set to release their self-titled debut album on February 9th via Dine Alone Records. You needn’t wait until then to experience the outfit’s nautical nonsense, though: Legend of the Seagullmen have made the whole thing available for streaming today.
Half prog opera, half blockbuster metal album, Legend of the Seagullmen finds the outfit — Hinds, Carey, and Griffin, plus filmmaker/guitarist Jimmy Hayward and vocalist Dave “Doctor” Dreyer — putting a high-fantasy twist on old-school hard-rock bombast (think Captain Beyond and Rush soundtracking a Lord of the Rings/Waterworld mash-up). In an interview with Billboard, Hayward credited Dreyer with conceiving the original concept for both the album and band: “a nautical Spaghetti Western” starring a mutant deep-sea diver hellbent on avenging his dead wife.
“He had this whole idea of this Japanese diver,” Hayward explained. “The eve before his wedding, he’s undersea doing his job, and a tsunami hits that causes a reactor to release all this radiation into the ocean. Suddenly, you’ve got this 150-foot deep-sea diver who’s enraged that his wife is killed, so he goes and sacks the city. That’s where it started, and the songs are all interconnected from there.”
Pre-order Legend of the Seagullmen here. Check out our interview with Legend of the Seagullmen for a full rundown on how the album’s whimsical cast of characters came together, as well as what to expect after pressing “play.”