If you’ve not yet had the pleasure of acquainting yourself with the mysterious Legend Of The Seagullmen, allow us to introduce you.



It’s a supergroup consisting of Mastodon’s Brent Hinds, Tool’s Danny Carey, Jonah Hex/Horton Hears A Who! director Jimmy Hayward, Dethlok bassist Pete Griffin, and finally, a frontman who goes by the name, ‘The Doctor’. What’s their deal? Get a load of this quote straight from the band themselves: The lore is real…This is the self-titled debut from Legend of The Seagullmen! We are the very men who have been anointed by the Seagullgod King to deliver pure rock fury and save you from the deep dark depths. Fifty foot mutant deep sea divers, enraged giant squid and bloodthirsty killer Orcas are on their way and nothing stands between you and a certain briny death but the Seagullmen! BOW DOWN AND FOREVER BASK IN THE GLORY OF THE SEAGULLGOD KING! And here’s a full stream of the band’s self titled debut:

So that clears that up, right? What do you mean, you love the record and you want to find out more? Okay then, luckily we chatted to Danny and Jimmy ahead of the release. Hopefully it helps… AHOY THERE, SEAGULLMEN! WHAT INITIALLY ATTRACTED YOU TO PENNING ODES TO THE DEEP SEA?

DANNY CAREY (DRUMS): “The great thing about the sea is if you run out of inspiration, you just keep going deeper! No one knows what’s down there in the ocean, we know more about the moon than the bottom of the ocean… for real!”

JIMMY HAYWARD (GUITAR): “Though I was a musician first – that’s how me and Danny first met – I’ve mainly worked in the movie business. I’m known as a director or writer or film-maker, so naturally we really care about that visual element, everything is carefully crafted because we’re artists in different ways. When I was a kid, growing up, I loved album art. I would sit there, and I still do to this day as if I was still eight years old, looking at the covers like [Iron Maiden’s] The Number Of The Beast and listening to the music. Danny would bring over things he loved, like Genesis and Yes, these heavy concept things and I would stare at the art for ages. I feel like this band has to be like a record cover – I love that singular image that captures everything perfectly. Look at Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell, I saw the cover and thought it would be the most ripping album ever. Then it came on and I turned it off. A great record cover can even over-deliver. In this band, we all seem to have disparate, broad selection of musical tastes. We all dig nerdy prog stuff, jazz stuff, heavy shit – Danny went to the ballet the other day. I grew up watching symphonies all the time. It was actually our singer, David ‘The Doctor’ Dreyer, who had this wild vision for our nautical theme…”



“ The great thing about the sea is if you run out of inspiration, you just keep going deeper!” Danny Carey

TELL US MORE ABOUT THE DOCTOR…

DANNY: “We could probably tell you about him, but then we’d have to kill you. He’s kinda mysterious – he’s the one that comes up with the lore and weirdness to our songs. Most of the world thinks everyone down south is a redneck weirdo, but then you meet a guy like him where you think, ‘This could only happen down there!’ He’s a freak, man. A special enigma. You just have to nurture him and feed him whatever it takes, sour beans and stuff like that. And Brent’s a wild bird – all I can say is he’s an outlaw. When we had Mastodon open up for Tool, our guitar player Adam actually went up to Brent to ask him how he did all that chicken pickin’ shit.”

JIMMY: “The Doctor brought this to me and Brent, we got all the guys together. We refined it together musically and from a story standpoint. The Doctor’s a really wild dude, he’s like a big, burly mustachioed unicorn. He lived with Brent in Atlanta back in the day, he comes from production design doing videos and shit, but he’s been doing art-rock shit with his brother going way back. He was in a band called Heinous Bienfang from Atlanta, who would throw raw fish at the audience, wrap themselves up in cling film or fling bags of flour at the crowd. He comes from a very art-rock background and he’s a very heavy cat.”

IS THERE A SONG ON THE ALBUM THAT CARRIES THE MOST MEANING? IT’S ALL PRETTY, UM, SEAGULLY…

JIMMY: “The Orca – I’ve lived my entire life right on the Pacific Ocean and the same goes for The Doctor. There was a place nearby called Sealand who captured an orca back when people used to go and see captive whales, before they realised how fucked up it was. There was a girl that worked for her dad at Sea Land – one day she was feeding it and ran out of fish. That thing grabbed her into the pool, pressed her against the bottom and killed her. That whale was sold to Sea World, its name was Tilikum and they renamed it Shamu. That whale killed four people there and when they sold it to a place in Spain and more people were killed there. I wrote that music and presented it to the Doctor… right before [documentary] Blackfish came out. We connected on the idea of an orca in octavity, lyrics about diving from stands and feeding on fans – this whale that could never sleep, went crazy and sent this sonar to all the other whales around the world – who come together, take over the world and destroy everything. It becomes a fantastical extrapolation of a story that’s super connected to us in this crazy nautical way.”



FAIR ENOUGH! YOU PLAYED YOUR FIRST SHOW ON NEW YEAR’S EVE SUPPORTING PRIMUS IN OAKLAND… WHAT CAN PEOPLE EXPECT FROM THE SEAGULLMEN LIVE EXPERIENCE AND DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS TO BRING IT OVERSEAS?

JIMMY: “Primus have been doing this huge New Year’s Eve show in the Bay Area for many years… it’s sort of a traditional thing and sells out every time. Danny’s actually played that with them one year when he was filling in while [Primus drummer] Herb was sick. Some of us are from the Bay Area, and it seemed like a natural fit.” DANNY: “Moving forwards it will be whenever time permits, man! We’re all busy people: Jimmy’s making movies, Brent’s in Mastodon, I have Tool. We have these windows that we’ll take advantage of in whatever way we can, because we believe in our band. But NYE is how we planned to break our band in. And it’s actually how we broke in Justin [Chancellor] when he joined Tool. His first gig was opening up for Primus on New Year’s Eve! A bass player’s debut show opening up for [Primus virtuoso leader/bassist] Les Claypool… he was fucking horrified!”



So there you have it, that’s the story of the Legend Of The Seagullmen. Check out the album stream right here and remember, the band release their self-titled debut album via Dine Alone Records on February 9.



Interview: Amit Sharma

Posted on February 6th 2018, 5:00pm