Mastodon Blast The Grammys Over Tenacious D Best Metal Performance Win

Mastodon‘s Bill Kelliher has come out and criticised the Grammys over Tenacious D winning this year’s Best Metal Performance award for their cover of Dio‘s The Last In Line, saying that for a comedy duo to win the award for a cover would be “like Weird Al Yankovic winning Best Rap Album for a Snoop Dogg song.”

Beating out Anthrax‘s Dio cover Neon Knights, Motorhead and Slipknot‘s originals Heartbreaker and The Negative One as well as Mastodon’s High Road, this is hardly the first time the award has stirred controversy with the metal community, the Grammy voters seen as being out of touch or just entirely clueless about metal. Kelliher said as much when speaking to Democrat and Chronicle:

“Everyone who votes for the Grammys is 55 and up, so we get matched up against the Foo Fighters, as has happened in the past. And Foo Fighters is always gonna win, it’s like Cheerios. Nothing against Dave Grohl, he’s a really nice person. But they’re not a metal band. They should match us against Lamb of God and Slayer. It’s like putting soul, R&B and rap together, they’re not the same type of music.”

Getting more specific, when it came down to discussing the Tenacious D win, Kelliher felt that popularity and mainstream recognition matters more than music when it comes to the vote, citing Black’s acting career as influencing the award outcome.

“They matched us against Tenacious D last year,” he explained. “We were up for High Road, and Tenacious D and Jack Black won for a cover of a Dio tune. Tenacious D, those guys are a comedy duo. We actually live and breathe our own songs and record them. The Grammy voters look at Jack Black and say, ‘We’ve seen him on ‘Kung Fu Panda,’ let’s vote for him.'”

This wasn’t the only event of note for Mastodon at the Grammys however, with Kelliher’s fellow guitarist Brent Hinds being kicked out (allegedly) after turning up dressed in a full Los Angelese Dodgers uniform, trolling reporters on the red carpet with bizarre interview responses, spilling the contents of his bag everywhere and refusing to pick up the mess. This is according to an Instagram post by his Giraffe Tongue Orchestra bandmate Ben Weinman.

The post detailed that after spilling underpants, money and weed everywhere event officials told Hinds, “Sir you have to leave.” Responding with a simple “Why” he was given and equally simple reason – “because you don’t know how to behave!”

Party Crasher in the house right before Brent Hinds gets kicked out of the awards show cause he pored his bag all over the floor and undies and money and weed spilled everywhere and he wouldn't pick it up. "Sir you have to leave." "Why" "because you don't know how to behave!"

A photo posted by Benjamin Weinman (@benweinman) on Feb 9, 2015 at 1:48pm PST

It seems Noel Gallagher must have forgotten about Mastodon when he recently wrote off the new generation or rock stars as being too soft (commenting he has “a cat that’s more rock’n’roll than all of them put together”) ‘cos that is some straight up rock n roll shit right there.

We love you Mastodon. Never change.

Gallery: Mastodon @ Luna Park Big Top, Sydney 28.03.15 / Photos: Ashley Mar