Guitar Songs, Tabs & Lessons

Mastodon

1 guitar song · Tabs, Lessons & Tone Guide Progressive Metal

Choose a Mastodon Song to Play

Blood and Thunder - Guitar Lesson

YouTube Stats: 51K · 2K

GuitarLessons365SongLessons Guitar Lesson

Band Overview

History and Guitar Legacy

Mastodon emerged from Atlanta, Georgia in 2000 and rapidly became one of the most important heavy bands of the 21st century. The dual-guitar partnership of Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher creates one of modern metal's most creative and technically demanding collaborations. Their riff writing draws from Thin Lizzy's harmonized leads, Neurosis's crushing sludge tone, and Progressive Rock's complex time signatures, offering guitarists diverse source material to study and incorporate.

Playing Style and Techniques

Brent Hinds delivers unpredictable bluesy, slide-influenced leads with unorthodox pentatonic phrasing rooted in country and Southern Rock. He uses raw vibrato and incorporates noise and feedback as melodic elements. Bill Kelliher serves as the riff architect, building rhythm parts on tight palm-muting, odd-time grooves, and drop-tuned power requiring significant right-hand stamina. Together they layer harmonized lines, dissonant intervals, and shifting dynamics creating orchestral density throughout their songs.

Why Guitarists Study Mastodon

Mastodon's music blends Progressive Metal, sludge, and Psychedelic Rock into a singular voice that pushes beyond standard metal vocabulary. Their approach isn't built on shred-speed virtuosity but demands precise rhythmic control, comfort with odd meters like 7/8 and 5/4, and the ability to switch dynamically between clean arpeggios and crushing distortion. This combination makes them essential for developing progressive rhythm playing and creative lead phrasing.

Difficulty and Learning Path

Entry-level Mastodon songs like 'Blood and Thunder' feature driving, downpicked aggression that's approachable for intermediate guitarists. However, their deeper catalog requires serious woodshedding and rhythmic precision across constantly shifting time signatures. Guitarists should expect a challenging learning curve but gain valuable experience in dynamic control, odd-meter navigation, and orchestral arrangement thinking that elevates their overall technical and creative abilities.

What Makes Mastodon Essential for Guitar Players

Mastodon's rhythm guitar demands serious palm-muting precision in drop tunings (typically Drop D or Drop C). Kelliher's riffs in songs like "Blood and Thunder" use relentless downpicking with tight muted chugs that will build your right-hand endurance fast.
Brent Hinds frequently uses hybrid picking and open-string drones to create riffs that sound bigger than typical power-chord metal. Learning his parts teaches you to integrate country-influenced techniques into heavy music in unexpected ways.
Odd time signatures are a Mastodon staple. Their songs shift between 4/4, 7/8, 5/4, and asymmetric groupings often within the same riff. Practicing their material is one of the best ways to internalize odd meters without it feeling like a math exercise.
The band's harmonized guitar parts, often in thirds, fourths, or dissonant intervals, are a masterclass in dual-guitar arranging. Learning both the Hinds and Kelliher parts to any given song reveals how they voice chords and melodies across two guitars for maximum impact.
Hinds's lead style blends blues-rock bends, aggressive legato runs, and occasional slide guitar into a progressive metal context. His vibrato is wide and vocal, and he frequently targets unusual chord tones rather than defaulting to pentatonic safety notes, great for expanding your soloing vocabulary.

Did You Know?

Brent Hinds originally came from a bluegrass and country background before playing metal, and he still plays banjo and lap steel regularly. You can hear this influence in his bending style and hybrid picking approach throughout Mastodon's catalog.

Bill Kelliher designed his own signature ESP guitar (the EC-401 BK) specifically to handle the band's aggressive drop tunings, choosing a set-neck construction for sustain and a single bridge humbucker for maximum riff clarity with no pickup-selector distractions.

On the album 'Crack the Skye,' Hinds tracked several lead parts using a 1958 Gibson Les Paul Junior, a single-pickup, P-90-loaded guitar, proving that some of their most complex tones come from surprisingly simple instruments.

Mastodon recorded 'Leviathan' (the album featuring "Blood and Thunder") with producer Matt Bayles, and much of the guitar tone on that record came from cranked vintage Laney heads blended with modern high-gain amps to get both grit and clarity.

Brent Hinds has said he deliberately avoids practicing scales in the traditional sense, preferring to develop ideas by ear and accident. His solos often have a loose, improvisational quality because of this approach, which is part of what makes them sound so distinctive.

During live performances, Kelliher and Hinds run completely different amp rigs to create stereo separation. Kelliher favors a tighter, more scooped modern tone while Hinds runs a midrange-heavy, more organic sound, and the contrast is key to their live wall of sound.

The intro riff to "Blood and Thunder" was partly inspired by the simplicity of classic Melvins riffs, the band wanted something that hit like a sledgehammer before the song opens up into more complex territory.

Essential Albums for Guitarists

Leviathan 2004

This is the album that put Mastodon on the map and it's the best starting point for guitarists. "Blood and Thunder" teaches aggressive downpicking and Drop D power, "Iron Tusk" is a masterclass in galloping rhythms and quick position shifts, and "Aqua Dementia" introduces the band's progressive side with complex time changes and melodic leads. The riffs are heavy but memorable, making them satisfying to learn.

Spotify Apple Music

Crack the Skye 2009

Mastodon's most progressive and melodically rich album is a goldmine for intermediate-to-advanced players. "Oblivion" features gorgeous clean arpeggios layered over odd-time rhythms, "The Czar" is an epic four-part suite that takes you through every dynamic and technique the band uses, and "The Last Baron" is a 13-minute prog odyssey that will test your endurance, time-feel, and ability to memorize complex arrangements.

Spotify Apple Music

Blood Mountain 2006

The bridge between Mastodon's sludge roots and their progressive ambitions, this album is packed with technically demanding riffs. "Crystal Skull" has intricate harmonized guitar lines and frantic picking patterns, "Colony of Birchmen" balances catchy hooks with crushing heaviness, and "Capillarian Crest" features some of Hinds's wildest lead work. Great for building both rhythm precision and lead creativity.

Spotify Apple Music

Remission 2002

Mastodon's debut is their heaviest and most physically demanding record to play. "March of the Fire Ants" is built on rapid-fire hammer-ons and pull-offs over a relentless sludge groove, and "Trampled Under Hoof" is a right-hand workout of palm-muted fury. If you want to build raw stamina and aggressive picking technique in low tunings, start here.

Spotify Apple Music

Tone & Gear

Guitar

Bill Kelliher is synonymous with his ESP Sparrowhawk signature, a futuristic single-humbucker design with a set neck, built specifically for drop-tuned rhythm work with maximum clarity and sustain. Brent Hinds plays a variety of guitars including his Epiphone Silverburst Flying V signature, Gibson Les Paul Customs, and occasionally vintage Les Paul Juniors with P-90s. Hinds gravitates toward guitars with thicker neck profiles for his bending-heavy lead style. Both players frequently use baritone-scale instruments for the band's lower tunings.

Amp

Kelliher has been closely associated with EVH 5150 III heads, running them on the high-gain channel with the gain around 6-7 for tight, articulate crunch that doesn't get flubby in drop tunings. He also uses Mesa/Boogie Mark series heads. Hinds favors a more diverse rig, he's used Orange Rockerverb heads, vintage Laneys, and Marshall JCM800s, often blending two different amp heads for a fuller, more complex midrange. Both players push tube power sections hard for natural saturation rather than relying purely on preamp gain.

Pickups

Kelliher runs a Lace Sensor Dissonance humbucker in his Sparrowhawk, a high-output pickup designed for clarity in drop tunings with a tight low end and aggressive upper-midrange bite that prevents muddiness during fast palm-muted passages. Hinds uses a mix of pickups depending on the guitar, from Lace Sensor Dirty Heshers (hot output, thick midrange) to stock Gibson humbuckers and P-90s. The contrast between their pickup choices contributes heavily to the separation between their tones in the mix.

Effects & Chain

Mastodon's pedalboards are more involved than most metal bands. Kelliher uses an ISP Decimator noise gate for tight rhythm tones, a Maxon OD808 overdrive as a clean boost to tighten up his amp's low end, and occasional chorus and delay for clean passages. Hinds runs a more eclectic board, wah pedal (Dunlop), delay (MXR Carbon Copy or Boss DD-series), phaser, and sometimes an octave pedal for his more psychedelic leads. Both players use reverb and delay tastefully during clean and ambient sections, but the core distortion tone comes from the amp heads, not dirt pedals.

Recommended Gear

Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Standard

Brent Hinds occasionally deploys the Les Paul Standard for its thick neck profile and balanced humbucker response, allowing him to execute his signature bending-heavy lead style with controlled sustain across Mastodon's drop-tuned material.

Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Custom

Hinds favors the Les Paul Custom for its thicker neck and refined hardware, pairing it with various pickups to achieve the complex midrange separation he blends across his dual-amp setup in Mastodon's layered guitar arrangements.

Guitar

Gibson Flying V

Hinds' Epiphone Silverburst Flying V signature provides a distinctly aggressive platform for his lead work, with its offset body and fast neck enabling the psychedelic, octave-laden solos that define Mastodon's progressive metal approach.

Amp

Marshall JCM800

Hinds channels the JCM800's raw tube saturation as part of his dual-amp blend, using its naturally compressed midrange to create one layer of Mastodon's thick, complex rhythm and lead tones without relying on excessive preamp gain.

Amp

Orange Rockerverb

Hinds pairs the Rockerverb's touch-responsive tube power section with his eclectic pedalboard to achieve Mastodon's crystalline clean tones and ambient passages while maintaining the organic saturation essential to their heavier sections.

Amp

Peavey 5150

Bill Kelliher's primary amp choice, the EVH 5150 III delivers the tight, articulate crunch he needs for palm-muted drop-tuned rhythms, with its high-gain channel set around 6-7 preventing flub while maintaining maximum clarity in Mastodon's dense arrangements.

How to Practice Mastodon on GuitarZone

Every Mastodon song page on GuitarZone includes a built-in Practice Toolbar. No app to download, no account needed. Open any song, then use the toolbar to slow the video to 0.5× speed, set an A/B loop around the exact riff you're working on, and jump between song sections instantly.

The toolbar appears automatically on every guitar tab, lesson, and cover page. Pick a song below, hit play, and start practicing at your own pace.

Practice Blood and Thunder - Guitar Lesson