Pitchfork: It seems like there's been a lot more visible twerking in the last year, whether Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" video or Miley Cyrus at the VMAs. Was there any one specific incident that stuck in your mind, or was it more about the general trend?

BD: I don’t think I was super clued in that it was so much of a trend. I didn’t know about the Nicki Minaj video until after. I remember obviously hearing about the Miley Cyrus thing, but it didn’t really have too much of an effect on why. I don’t feel like what we were trying to do was jump on any twerking bandwagon, I guess. We just wanted to put something into our music video that people would probably think, "That shouldn’t be there", or "Those two things don’t go together, they shouldn’t be together." I wanted to just put them together because we can.

Pitchfork: How was the casting handled?

BD: I’m not sure. Jonathan [Rej, who co-directed the video with Thomas Bingham] kind of took the ball and ran with it. I’m not really sure how he found all the girls, but basically it came together in about a week and a half, about three weeks ago.

The girls, they had a blast. The most important thing for us was that they were in charge and that they were having fun, kind of trading back and forth dancing. You know? Trying to repurpose something and put something where most people would say it doesn’t belong, but it can.

Pitchfork: Videos that feature twerking always inspire a debate about that fine line between something appropriate and sexism or racism. Did the band actively consider those dynamics during the filming?

BD: Going into it, our main goal was to make fun of that ‘90s kind of video and have it be taken over by this dance video, which Mastodon would never do. We would never put out a dance video; we’re this very serious metal band. But our videos have always been kind of weird. We’re so serious about songwriting, we’re so serious in our lyrics—which are really serious, and are about a really serious thing that happened to me personally.

But if you’re going to make this very high concept, dramatic video, who’s gonna watch that? It’s a music video. For the "Blood and Thunder" video, we got 150 clowns, and people were upset about that. They were like, "It should be *Moby Dick-*themed! What’s the deal?" We kind of took the music video as a way to round out, because of the fact that we’re so serious on stage, so serious in our music, so serious in our art with our artwork of the record. The music videos were a way for us to put more of our personality into it as far as our sense of humor, or making it twisted somehow, or different, or bizarre, or provocative.

With the video itself, we wanted to make sure that the women that were there were in charge and that they were having fun. They made the video what it is. If it wasn’t for them and their talent and going out and doing flips and splits and just bringing it, it wouldn’t be great. All of them are forces of nature. It was amazing to meet them and amazing to watch them do their thing. There’s a scene where the garage door starts to open, and Khristine Moore, who plays the "queen," is there. It gives me chills when I watch that, she just looks so awesome.

Pitchfork: There was a column in The Guardian that called the video sexist.