The day after Mastodon’s “Sultan’s Curse” won Best Metal Performance at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards, bassist / vocalist Troy Sanders stopped by to chat about his night.

Mastodon were part of a stacked Best Metal Performance category, facing off against August Burns Red, Body Count, Code Orange and Meshuggah. Some metalheads may look down at the idea of award shows, but Sanders was stoked about the Grammys. “I think it’s great,” the musician says. “The more attention to all of us [metal bands] the better … [A Grammy] wasn’t the goal, but now that it’s happened, it’s like, 'Wow, we’re appreciated by a bunch of other people that we never thought would even look our way.'”

The Grammy win is somewhat bittersweet for Mastodon. The band’s widely heralded Emperor of Sand was inspired by the cancer battles of Troy’s wife, drummer / vocalist Brann Dailor’s mother and guitarist Bill Kelliher’s mother, the last of whom died while Mastodon were making the album.

“The ‘Sultan’s Curse’ in our story is cancer,” Sanders explains. “I thought it was funny that a year later after writing the record… At the Grammys last night they said, ‘And the winner is… ‘Sultan’s Curse.’ It’s like, ‘Cancer, yeah!’ You know? It was a celebratory moment. That’s fucking nuts … Inspiration can come from good and bad, you know? And I’ve thanked [my wife] for that.”

Check out our talk with a victorious Troy Sanders in the clip above.

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