Nate Garrett on the Trials and Tribulations Behind Spirit Adrift’s Final LP
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April 10, 2026
Photo by Alexia Ranae
If you’re gonna go out, might as well go out on top. Someone much wiser than us said that, but Spirit Adrift vocalist, guitarist, and all-around mastermind Nate Garrett has taken it to heart. The Texas metal band’s sixth and latest album, Infinite Illumination, sees Garrett and his bandmates—bassist Sonny DeCarlo, drummer Mike Arellano, and guitarist Jason Dahlke—at the top of their game, playing some of the most memorable songs Garrett has ever written. It will also be their last album.
Shortly before writing the material, Garrett started drinking again after nearly a decade of sobriety. It was a deliberate decision, not a spontaneous relapse. When the songs were close to completion, his wife, Nicole, was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Since then, Garrett has spent much of his time caring for her, including during the recording process.
“Whenever I finish writing a Spirit Adrift record, something awful happens,” he says. “Every fucking time. One time, it was my dog dying. Another time, it was multiple people overdosing and dying. After another one, someone got elected. This was the most extreme case. My wife would never want me to quit on account of what’s going on with her, but there’s a curse on this band. I’m still going to be making music, just not Spirit Adrift. I know it sounds superstitious and weird, but I can’t go through it again.”
Below, Garrett shares some of the trials and tribulations behind Infinite Illumination.
What were your goals when you started writing this record?
Making the heaviest, most evil record within the stylistic confines of Spirit Adrift that I possibly could. And I had that goal before a bunch of horrible shit started happening. I was sober for nine and a half years. I quit being sober around the beginning of writing the record. I was pretty much done when the cancer diagnosis came. So, fuck, man. The original goal was as heavy as possible, as evil as possible, as mean as possible. Spirit Adrift is a pretty melodic band, so I didn’t want to completely turn my back on the fans and shit, but dude, once all that shit started happening, it made it that much more natural for the music to be that way.
Where do you think that mentality was coming from before everything started going bad?
Oh, I was already fucking pissed. Just a couple of nights ago, I was having a really good catch-up with Eric [Wagner] from Gatecreeper, who’s one of my best friends, and one of the best dudes on Earth. It seems like everyone we know is suffering right now, whether it’s in a general sense or really specific things like cancer or family stuff. He said something like, “I almost feel like the Earth is passing through some kind of dark energy field because everyone you talk to is suffering.”
I feel like it’s important to force yourself to look at ways to be grateful, and I think now, especially, that’s the only way to survive all the shit that’s going on. But even before all this shit started happening to me personally, it’s just been a vibe since Covid of like, “Is shit going to get any better for anybody ever?”
What led you to break from sobriety?
Well, it’s interesting, man. I’m a big, big proponent of recovery. I still am. I did the 12-step thing and still participate in that, and I believe in it, and I love it. It saved my life. But I just reached a point where I felt like the longer I stay sober, the more I do the right thing, the worse I feel, and the worse my life gets. So, what the fuck is the point? Obviously, I don’t want to die from [alcoholism], and I know countless people who have, but yeah, man: I thought about it, and I’d been thinking about it for a long time. I got a bottle of scotch, and I won’t lie—it made me feel better.
Now, I would never in a million years want to put anything out there that would suggest that that’s a solution for somebody like me because it’s a deadly thing that I have and that a lot of people have. I’m not recommending this—please put that in print. But the approach to this record was different than any record I’ve done before because of that.
How so?
I thought of the Ernest Hemingway thing. He said to write drunk and edit sober. Again, I’m not saying that’s a healthy approach, but that’s what I did. When I was demoing the record, I was really going for it. I don’t know if it was the chicken or the egg, but the idea of making a darker, more pissed off, more evil, more angry record…I don’t know if that fed the drinking and the substance thing or vice versa, but I think it worked for what I was trying to do.
It’s a killer record. But you made great albums when you were sober, too.
Thank you. It’s my favorite record I’ve ever made for sure. I’ve listened to it sober, and I’ve listened to it fucked up. I worked on it sober, and I worked on it fucked up. I’m not saying that’s good, but it is a first.
Besides the fact that it fits with your Morbid Angel alphabetical chronology, how did you decide on the title Infinite Illumination?
Well, it’s almost like the band name: Ideally, you want as few words as possible that sound as cool as possible. After you have the words, you can figure out what it means. I liked the word “illumination” for sure, and there’s a UFC fighter, this Brazilian dude named Charles Oliveira, who would wear this gold chain that says “Iluminado.” He would beat the fuck out of people in the ring and then scream into the camera, “I’m illuminated by God!” That would always give me chills.
How does that play out in the songs?
I had a vision of a main character who thinks he’s illuminated by the universe. It doesn’t matter if he’s delusional or if he’s actually right. I was thinking about prophets and cult leaders, and then there’s that lyric on that Superjoint [Ritual] song [“Symbol of Evermore”] where he says, “My God beats the fuck out of your God,” which is one of the most childish lyrics of all time, but it fits. This narrator is in every song, and everything is violent spiritual warfare, both internal and external. He hates himself, and he hates everybody else, but he thinks he’s got the answer and nobody else does.
You’ve got some guests on the album as well.
A lot of people now are doing vocalist features, so I thought it’d be cooler to do guitar player features. Steve [Jansson] from Crypt Sermon plays on “White Death,” and Arthur Rizk from Eternal Champion and Sumerlands plays on the last song, “Where Once There Was an Ocean.” And then James Murphy, from all my favorite bands [Testament, Obituary, Death], he and I go back and forth on “I Am Sustained,” which was a dream come true.