Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher on 20 years of Leviathan, and how he owes his guitar tone to Jerry Cantrell and a blanket
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Mastodon’s breakthrough record, Leviathan. The album’s crushing tones would come to define the Mastodon sound in subsequent years. It also marked the first time the band experimented with the idea of doing a concept album. That concept loosely follows the story of Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby Dick, which was inspired by the real-life tragedy of the sinking of a ship called The Essex.
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While the album only reached #139 on the Billboard 200 chart, Mastodon was never a band that sought mainstream appeal. They have always been fiercely loyal to their own artistic goals. This year, the band broke ties with major labels and began their journey as an independent band.
Image: Press
The Songwriting
The songs on Leviathan came together while the band was on an early tour with Clutch, as guitarist Bill Kelliher explained, “The songs weren’t even recorded yet, but we played them on the way out there at the shows with Clutch. We just kind of made up the lyrics, I think, at the moment on stage. We just kind of made stuff up because we always come up with the vocals last. I Am Ahab, we hadn’t even written that one yet. That was one Brann and I put together in Bob Lang Studio where we did the drums.”
The Guitar Gear
When Mastodon went in to record their album Leviathan, they had not amassed the troves of gear that they currently use in the studio. Bill Kelliher used fellow guitarist Brent Hinds’ Marshall JMP along with his own Marshall JCM800, which had been modded with 6550 tubes just prior to the recording. Kelliher has owned that JCM800 since about 1991 and still owns it. He said he also may have used a Laney head that they had at the studio in Seattle, Washington, where they recorded the album. As for Brent, he used his Marshall JMP, and he may have used a Sovtek as well. The JMPs were used in conjunction with a BK Butler tube driver. As for guitars, Kelliher used his 1982 Les Paul Custom and 1979 Les Paul Custom Silverburst.
Bill Kelliher of Mastodon. Image: Press
The album was recorded primarily at Robert Lang Studio, a legendary studio previously used by Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Candlebox, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains. Mastodon would later tour with Alice in Chains, and that connection ultimately lead to Kelliher ditching his Marshalls for Friedmans, where he later got his own signature amp. That signature amp is a big part of recreating the Leviathan tones on tour today, as he explained,
“So, when I was on tour with Alice in Chains, I think it was 2010 or 2011 or something, and the whole band didn’t have their amps on stage. Their amps were backstage, with blankets over them, like [an ISO cabinet], with a microphone in front of the cabinet and a blanket over that, backstage. So, you walk around backstage, and you can hear this muffled sound of Jerry Cantrell’s guitar. So I’d walk over every night, and I’d just lift up the blanket, put my ear in there, and I would fucking listen to his tone, which is buttery, fucking smooth. I mean, tone is in the fingers, yes, but it definitely helps to have a good amp.”
Kelliher continued, “Eventually, I was like, ‘Jerry, what the fuck are you playing? You sound so fucking good and sexy and awesome. I love it!’ He’s like, well, I’m using these Friedman Marshas; at the time, they were called Marshas; now they’re the Brown Eye. But he’s like, ‘I have an extra one if you want to borrow it.’ I was like fuck yeah, and I put it in my rig, and it was like it was like night and day with the Marshall.”
Cantrell also gave Kelliher a Motor City Pickup for his guitar that he immediately incorporated into his sound. Today, when recreating the tones of the mighty Leviathan record, Kelliher trusts his own signature ESP guitars – the Sparrowhawk, the Royal Shiva, the BK-600, and his own version of the Eclipse. For amps, he relies on his signature amp, the Friedman Butterslax, as well as the Super Kraken and the Super Duchess from Victory Amps. He uses the Line 6 Helix for the majority of effects, including the tube screamer that is modelled there.
Image: Jimmy Hubbard
Let’s Talk About Tone
Kelliher is one of the finest riff masters of our generation and his tone is a vital part of that, so I asked how he prefers to set up his amps for rhythm guitar tracking, to which he responded, “almost every single amp that I plug into my EQ settings is pretty much the same. The Low end is almost all the way up, mids are in the middle, and Treble is around three or four o’clock. I just think Mids are very important.”
For the past two and a half decades, Mastodon has carried the flag for heavy music, and we expect that tradition to continue as the band continues to work on new material. “I’m always writing,” Kelliher reveals. “I’m always compiling riffs, and songs ideas and tracking them and then adding harmonies, and adding all the parts on top, and layering. I like to make them thick and use different guitars and different amps, and experiment with different tones.”
Kelliher continued, sharing his specific approach to layering tones to create those massive riffs, “I’m usually recording three tracks at once with three different amps and then doubling it with a Telecaster, for instance, I use this Ronnie Wood Telecaster that ESP gave me that fucking smokes. I mean, by itself, it’s not my thing, but when you put that in the mix with, like, a Les Paul Custom, it covers all the bases of all the frequencies that you’d want in a rhythm tone. I’ve been using that on the past few records, for sure. I love it.”
The 20th Anniversary version of Leviathan is out now.
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