In a new interview, Mastodon drummer and lead vocalist Brann Dailor revealed the band is already planning the follow-up to 2017’s Emperor Of Sand (Reprise) album. The band is already sketching out ideas while on tour, most recently with Primus and upcoming Canadian tour dates with Dinosaur Jr., and will reconvene officially early next year to begin in earnest.

“We’re always a work in progress, trying to figure out what we’re going to do next. We’re letting the ideas just come and setting them to the side for future work, and once in a while just sort of saying out loud what those ideas might be — whether they’re collected onstage when we’re doing soundcheck or if they are something that gets worked on backstage. You hear somebody noodling, and you’re, like, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ Whenever the ears perk up to either [guitarists] Brent [Hinds] or Bill [Kelliher] doing something backstage, that’s always a nice little surprise.

“Once we get home, and we decompress from the ‘Emperor Of Sand’ tour cycle, sometime early next year, we’ll start dumping out the riffs and seeing what’s new and seeing what’s fresh and what we’re digging on, and then we’ll just start working — do what we normally do.”