“The deeper you can go emotionally when you’re writing and playing music, the better,” states Mastodon drummer, vocalist and songwriter Brann Dailor in the latest installment of the band’s new documentary series on the making of the group’s 2009 opus Crack the Skye.
The episode goes deep into how the death of Dailor’s sister Skye when she was only 14 shaped the record. Along with Dailor and Mastodon singer-guitarist Brent Hinds, Neurosis frontman Scotty Kelly also appears in the segment, opening up about his guest spot on the title track, which was particularly meaningful to him due to his familiarity with the tragic nature of someone close dying by suicide.
“I did not want to let them down on that one, you know, really more than any of the other ones,” Kelly says in an interview clip. A frequent collaborator with Mastodon, the musician has contributed guest vocals on each of the Atlanta band’s last six studio albums. In an effort to make sure he was respectful of the subject matter dealt with in the track, Kelly requested to see a picture of the late Skye and talked with Dailor’s father before recording his part in the song.
Dailor and Hinds go on to discuss how the drummer had yet to address the incident in his music at the time, but seeing Hinds put himself “out there emotionally,” Dailor decided to do so on what would become Crack the Skye. “It’s kind of an issue he’s not dealing with for, like, a long time,” Hinds explains in older interview footage. His friendship with the drummer came long after Skye’s death, but he calls Dailor his “best friend in the whole entire world” and talks about how deeply personal the song has become for everyone who learned her story.
A collection of photos showing a young Dailor and his sister in various candid situations rolls across the screen as the band members and Kelly each weigh in with their takeaways from the experience of making the record. “We were really dialed in on that one,” the Neurosis singer recalls in a tense moment while adjusting his hat and gripping his chair. “That was heavy.”