Mastodon have apologized on behalf of member Brent Hinds after he made comments about metal band Disturbed that included an offensive slur.

Hinds was a guest on Jamey Jasta’s podcast The Jasta Show earlier this week, where he talked about Mastodon opening for Disturbed at Mayhem Festival in 2008.

When asked if Hinds had any bucket list tours left, he responded: “No, I did a lot of tours I didn’t want to do though, like Disturbed and all that Mayhem stupid bullshit. G** a** shit. You gotta fuckin’ open up for Disturbed. You gotta play to people that like Disturbed.”

He followed up by saying that the festival crowd has “just a fuckin’ bunch of drunk Americans”, and Disturbed fans are “receptive to anything, I imagine.” He added that the band’s first tour for metal label Relapse – where they played with death metal band Dying Fetus – was “horrible”.

Consequence has since reported that music writer Morgan Y Evans then commented on a recent Instagram post by Mastodon, in which drummer Brann Dailor is seen dressed as Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford for Halloween. They expressed that “it was super crappy today to see you all over the press w a member using homophobic language to describe a tour with @disturbed”.

The band responded to their comment with a statement. “This really bums me out,” it reads. “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.”

The band clarified that they “have no ill will towards Disturbed” and that the band “were always super cool to us on the Mayhem tour.” They also added that the “interviewer might have caught Brent on a bad day.”

Mastodon recently released their eighth studio album ‘Hushed and Grim’ via Reprise Records. In an interview with NME, Dailor talked about the band’s collaborative process.

“We don’t talk about our feelings with each other, we just put them in the lyrics,” he admitted. “We’re blokes so we’re not sitting in a room telling each other how we feel, but writing songs together is pretty close.”