Mastodon have spent much of their career turning loss, mortality and upheaval into monumental heavy music, but few albums have arrived carrying the emotional weight of Marrow Deep. Their first for Loma Vista Recordings, the band’s ninth studio album follows 2021’s Hushed And Grim and begins a dramatically different chapter in their story.

Marrow Deep is Mastodon’s first album following the departure and subsequent death of founding guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in August 2025. His absence hangs heavily over a record already shaped by profound personal loss, including drummer Brann Dailor’s loss of his mother. Rather than retreat from that grief, Dailor, bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders and guitarist Bill Kelliher poured it directly into the music.

Inspired in part by the Three Fates of Greek mythology and the threads connecting life, death and destiny, Marrow Deep finds Mastodon confronting what remains after someone is gone. The idea runs through songs including “Your Ghost Again,” “The Vanishing,” “Moth and Bone” and the closing “The Three Fates,” giving the album a thematic backbone worthy of a band that has long been drawn to grand concepts and deeply personal storytelling.

It also introduces a new version of Mastodon. Guitarist Nick Johnston joins Dailor, Sanders and Kelliher on the album, while longtime touring keyboardist João Nogueira makes significant contributions. The record was co-produced with Patrik Berger and Kurt Ballou, whose combined backgrounds help bring both muscle and detail to Mastodon’s famously intricate attack.

Early tracks showed that the changes haven’t dulled the band’s appetite for the unexpected. “Your Ghost Again” moves through muscular riffs and shifting rhythms while carrying an unmistakable sense of mourning. “Snakes For Dinner” reunites Mastodon with Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, making his first appearance on one of their records since “Colony Of Birchmen” from 2006’s Blood Mountain.

The album also features a guest appearance from Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, connecting Mastodon with one of the musicians who helped establish the vocabulary of heavy metal more than half a century ago.

Across 12 tracks, including “Barbarians Blood,” “Poisonous Weapons,” “Out Like A Lamb,” “In The Ruins,” “Golden Spires” and “A Vampire’s Demeanor,” Mastodon balance the crushing riffs and complex arrangements that have defined them with the emotional directness demanded by everything they’ve endured.

There’s no escaping the circumstances surrounding Marrow Deep, and Mastodon don’t try. Instead, they acknowledge the people they’ve lost while finding a reason to keep creating together. The result is an album about grief, friendship, survival and the lasting marks people leave behind.