MASTODON's BRANN DAILOR Talks 'Catch The Throne' Contribution

In a brand new interview with Australia's Faster Louder, MASTODON drummer Brann Dailor was asked how "White Walker", his band's contribution to the the second installment of "Catch The Throne: The Mixtape", for HBO's Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning series "Game Of Thrones", came about.

"We're big fans of the show, and the writer is a big metal fan," he explained. "Brent [Hinds], our guitar player, met some of the cast members and one of the writers at the Sonosphere festival in the U.K., and we just kept in touch and they told us about this 'Catch The Throne' mixtape thing. Last year, it was kind of a hip-hop thing, I remember, and they said they wanted to branch out and make it more of a mixed tape and have some other kinds of music involved. And one of the styles they wanted was to include some metal bands."

He continued: "We were super excited. It's one of our favorite shows as a band; we all gather around the TV on Sunday nights after we play our rock show, if the show is in full swing and we're on tour. We get together and watch it. We're big fans. So when the opportunity presented itself, we were excited to be a part of it. We're excited with what we were able to come up with, even if it's not a 'metal' song per se. It's something different."

Brann added: "Every opportunity we get to do something like this, where's it's moodier and different and we know it's going to reach a lot of people, it's a welcome opportunity."

Asked if any progress has been made on the songwriting for MASTODON's follow-up to last year's "Once More 'Round The Sun" album, Dailor said: "Not really. We have a few songs that were left over from the last record, but we're still figuring out what's going to go on with those. Either it'll be a part of the next album or we'll do something completely different. Now we're at the point where we're in the thick of 'Once More 'Round The Sun' touring, and doing a lot of travelling, those kind of things. So we're in the middle of that."

He continued: "But it's cool to have little things like ['Catch The Throne'] come up and be able to act on them. You've got to make sure you can take advantage of those opportunities if they present themselves.

"We always want to invite more people to the MASTODON table. It's not something we easily have any time to do, because we're always on tour. So we don't have time to sit and write a song for 'Game Of Thrones', but this little ditty just popped in my head, luckily. And we got home and had a month or so off, so we had some time to put it together. It all fell into place. So yay for that."