Mastodon Turns Loss Into “Your Ghost Again” On New Single

By Marcus Bennett

Mastodon’s “Your Ghost Again” is available now through Loma Vista Recordings and offers an early look at a full-length album that was still being completed when the single was announced.

In the recording studio, Brann Dailor kept seeing Brent Hinds. Dailor described looking to his right and expecting to find his longtime Mastodon bandmate holding a guitar where he had stood for years. The image vanished almost at once. Hinds was gone.

Dailor said the experience became the heart of the song. Mastodon said the release followed an especially difficult period marked by the deaths of Hinds and Dailor’s mother. Rather than explain those losses, the band put the resulting emotions into the recording.

“I was just singing about what I was seeing, and I was seeing ghosts,” Dailor said.

Grief in the room

Dailor also described returning to places he had shared with someone and briefly imagining that the person remained. A rush of excitement arrived first. Memory followed, and the excitement collapsed. He said the same pattern applied to his mother.

Those recollections shaped the recording sessions for “Your Ghost Again.” The single keeps the unstable flashes of recognition, expectation and loss intact. It gives grief a heavy, direct musical form without turning the loss into a tidy lesson.

Mastodon’s catalogue has moved between mythology, elaborate concepts and intensely personal work. The new single continues that range while drawing directly on the band members’ lives. For a group known for towering riffs and intricate arrangements, the song offers another significant entry, demonstrating how heavy music can carry difficult emotion without losing its force.

To accompany the release, Mastodon shared a music video and a conversation with journalist J Bennett. In that conversation, the musicians discussed the experiences behind the song in their own words. Together, the video and discussion extend the release beyond the finished track.

How the recording was assembled

Mastodon credited the musicians and production team behind the track:

• Troy Sanders and Brann Dailor trade vocals.
• Guitarists Bill Kelliher and new guitarist Nick Johnston move between enormous riffs and atmospheric passages.
• Keyboardist João Nogueira adds another layer and gives the heavier sections room to breathe.
• Patrik Berger and Kurt Ballou produced the track. Andrew Scheps handled the mix.

The resulting recording balances Mastodon’s considerable power with the vulnerability running through its lyrics. The guitars supply weight and scale, the keyboards open space around them, and Sanders and Dailor’s shared vocals keep the established core present within the changed arrangement.

What does the new lineup change for Mastodon?

Johnston’s addition gives Mastodon a second guitarist alongside Bill Kelliher. Sanders and Dailor continue the musical partnership that has defined the band for decades. Mastodon described this as a developing lineup, and “Your Ghost Again” gives listeners an early account of how the new member fits with the established core.

For listeners, the practical change is a second guitar voice and a broader instrumental palette around Sanders and Dailor, whose decades-long partnership remains the center of the developing lineup. The single also previews the full-length album, which Mastodon was still completing when it announced the track.

The 2026 stage

Mastodon’s 2026 live schedule places Loathe on the European leg and Deafheaven and Alcest on the North American run:

• European performances: Loathe
• North American performances: Deafheaven and Alcest

Both legs sit under the banner The Poisonous Weapons Tour.

The forthcoming record now has to reconcile that emotional directness with a changed lineup, while preserving the force that made the song work. Dailor still sees familiar figures at the edge of his vision. “Your Ghost Again” gives those memories a public form. The forthcoming album will test whether that emotional directness can hold across a full record.