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The Great Ass-todon Controversy: Brann Dailor defends his metal band’s twerking video

Nevermind Ebola in Texas, for some, the most worrisome thing this week is the new Mastodon video for “The Motherload,” which features a bunch of ladies twerking in some Satantic ritual throwdown. We’ve seen twerking a lot in the past year or so, from Miley and Nicki and Taylor to music festivals in Europe to venues around Boston, but seeing it in a music video for the Atlanta metal band?

The Guardian called it misogynistic and “a bit sexist”, among other things.

“Aside from the band miming gainfully along to their song, it features a startling and (almost) comically OTT quantity of large female bottoms and frenzied twerking, much as we might expect to see in one of those high budget hip-hop or pop videos,” writes Dom Lawson for the UK pub. “It is what those of us who lean to the left on such matters generally regard as “a bit sexist.” And I’m being generous to Mastodon here.”

Naturally, Mastodon — or Ass-todon, according to Boston’s Seager Tennis — have defended their video, and drummer Brann Dailor spoke to Pitchfork about it yesterday. Here’s the recap, via Metal Hammer:

“The last thing that I wanted to do was come on and be defensive, because I don’t feel like I should have to defend it. It’s a music video and it’s really not supposed to be something that gets people this upset because this was really a fun thing that doesn’t really mean too much. It’s not to be taken so seriously.

“I just don’t see the sexism in it. I know there’s half-naked women that are shaking their butts. For some people it’s titillating, but for me it just looked amazing. I thought the girls were awesome and talented, and I thought it was amazing to watch.

“I knew there was going to be some negativity. But we do that; we’re that kind of band. We weren’t trying to make fun of hip-hop videos. It was a fine line, because I didn’t want it to come off being sexist, so I thought that maybe the females took centre stage and looked powerful and had this dance battle.”

Dailor continues:

“I don’t feel like what we were trying to do was jump on any twerking bandwagon. 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.”

Here’s the video, in case you missed it…

[embedvideo id=”Sp7CYvh8FwA” website=”youtube”]