Mastodon have publicly explained the reasons behind their March 2025 dismissal of guitarist and co-founder Brent Hinds, who died last summer aged 51 after his motorcycle collided with a car in Atlanta, Georgia. The remaining members — Brann Dailor, Bill Kelliher and Troy Sanders — address the circumstances in a new 35-minute film titled The Mastodon in the Room, saying they wanted to tell their side of a 25-year relationship in their own words rather than leave it to online speculation. The band frame the film as both a tribute to a beloved friend and an honest account of the difficulties that preceded his exit.

In the film, the surviving members watch archive footage of Hinds while Sanders attributes the split largely to Hinds' struggles with alcohol, which he says peaked during the recording of the 2021 double album Hushed and Grim. Sanders describes that period as the most divided the band had ever been in the studio, citing Hinds' evident "dissociation" and reduced effort, and says the subsequent touring cycle produced the weakest band cohesion and performance in a decade. In a statement, the band acknowledged Hinds as "a wild man, our wild man", saying the loss brought "a type of grief we never expected" and that they felt fans deserved to hear the story directly from them.