A member of Mastodon recently used the word "gay" pejoratively in an interview.

The band has now apologized for perpetuating the homophobic slur in an Instagram response to a heavy metal journalist who called them out for the language.

Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds uttered the slur on Thursday's (Nov. 4) episode of The Jasta ShowHatebreed vocalist Jamey Jasta's podcast. (The entire episode has since been removed.)

In the same remark, Hinds disparaged fellow metal act and former tourmates Disturbed when asked if there were any tours left on his bucket list.

"No. I did a lot of tours I didn't want to do though, like Disturbed and all that Mayhem stupid bullshit," Hinds responded. "[Homophobic slur] shit. You gotta fuckin' open up for Disturbed. You gotta play to people that like Disturbed."

Loudwire chose not to duplicate the slur and instead used the bracketed indicator in our coverage of the interview. Subsequently, music writer Morgan Y. Evans of the website Metal Riot left a condemning comment on one of Mastodon's Instagram posts.

Evans wrote, in part, "as an lgbtq support of the band who has seen you live 3x, written you up many times in magazines and effin flew once to NOLA to see you from NY State, it was super crappy today to see you all over the press w a member using homophobic language." (See the full comment near the bottom of this post.)

The band replied, "This really bums me out. I'm very sorry we hurt your feelings or anyone else's, that is never our intention. We want our LGBTQ fans to feel safe listening to our music and coming to see us live."

They continued, "We also have no ill will towards Disturbed, they were always super cool to us on the Mayhem tour. I think that interviewer might have caught Brent on a bad day. Sorry for upsetting you or anyone else, we appreciate you and all of our fans very much."

According to MetalSucks, it was Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor who wrote back on Instagram. In a direct message between Evans and Dailor — of which Evans shared a screenshot — Dailor added, "I have no control over Brent." He said the guitarist "rarely does interviews."

Regarding the decision to remove the episode after the reaction to Hinds' comment, Jasta said on Friday (Nov. 5) that it was "never meant to create division or stress [Hinds] is my friend & I want nothing but the best for him. He has a right to his opinion but once his words were being used against him I figured it was best to not let one crappy podcast take any shine away."

Mastodon's new album Hushed and Grim arrived last week. In Jasta's Hinds interview, the Mastodon rocker also discussed starting a new band with High on Fire and Sleep member Matt Pike.

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