Produced by Patrik Berger (Taylor Swift, Robyn) and Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou, the song is the first piece of new Mastodon music to be released since the death of co-founding guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds, who departed the lineup in March 2025 and passed away in a motorcycle accident five months later.
"'Your Ghost Again' is about when you lose somebody that's close to you that you existed with for most of your life," says drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor. "When we were in the studio recording, I kept seeing Brent. I'd see him on my right holding the guitar because that's where he'd usually be. It's the same with my mom: I keep seeing her. I was just singing about what I was seeing, and I was seeing ghosts.”
The song is "about being in those familiar places you used to be with people, which for us is in the studio. I just kept seeing [Brent] out of the corner of my eye, where he would normally be with his guitar. It's about that: your mind plays tricks on you, especially so soon after someone dies and you're in the places where they always were. You just see them."
"My portion of the song, lyrically, is all about Brent, and for Brent," adds bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders. "The bridge lyrics are two lines of pure gratitude towards Brent. It's all the gifts from you, now you can take them back where you must go, meaning you came into my life, you exposed me to things that blew my mind, together we conquered thousands of stages around the world, had magical moments that we can never repeat again, but all the beauty that you brought it still remains, always will, and it's just a line of gratitude because that's important that we include Brent."
Mastodon have issued eight studio albums to date; their latest is 2021’s “Hushed And Grim.”