Posted by Dudheq in
His style is very jazzy and prog-rock influenced.....
Brann Dailor is the drummer for Mastodon, an American heavy metal band based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dailor was born into a musical family. His grandparents were members of a 1950's bluegrass band based in Tennessee; his mother and stepfather played in a Rush cover band.
His sister Skye committed suicide at age 14. After her death, Dailor spent time in a mental hospital and fell heavily into drugs. Her death served as an inspiration for Mastodon's fourth studio album, Crack the Skye. Although the album's story line involves the adventures of a paraplegic boy in Tsarist Russia, Dailor told Metal Hammer that many of the songs are fantasy narratives involving him saving his sister from death.
On limited edition box sets of Crack the Skye, a photo of Dailor's sister can be seen through a tunnel lithogram in the album art.
In a meet and greet during October 2009, Dailor stated that he had been playing drums since he was 3 or 4. His fill-heavy drumming style is influenced by jazz and prog-rock. Dailor has stated in interviews that his favorite albums are Stevie Wonder's Innervisions and Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. His drumming has been more and more acclaimed as Mastodon has become better known, and he performed at the Modern Drummer Festival 2006. Before forming Mastodon, Dailor and fellow Mastodon member Bill Kelliher were members of the Rochester-based band Lethargy, and they played on the album In the Eyes of God by Today Is the Day. In particular, Dailor's performance on In the Eyes of God has received great recognition and praise in the underground scene for his extremely technical, fill-heavy drumming. In addition he was also a founding member of the Rochester/Atlanta based band Gaylord; and played a few shows with the grindcore band Discordance Axis, filling in for renowned drummer Dave Witte.
His style is very jazzy and prog-rock influenced and has been considered by many to be one of the best and most exciting modern drummers. Many describe his style as "organized chaos". His style is polyrhythmic and very fill-heavy, rarely using conventional drumming methods and common rock beats.
"My parents were hippies, but they were Frank Zappa hippies, you know? They were putting Miles Davis' Bitches Brew on my headphones when I was two years old. I grew up listening to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Close to the Edge by Yes, King Crimson's Red. All that stuff was jamming at my house at full volume all the time when I was a baby, along with Coltrane's Love Supreme, Stevie Wonder -- Innervisions -- stuff like that. Constantly."
