{"id":387353,"date":"2026-04-11T22:10:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T22:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/387353\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T22:10:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T22:10:25","slug":"nate-garrett-on-the-trials-and-tribulations-behind-spirit-adrifts-final-lp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/387353\/","title":{"rendered":"Nate Garrett on the Trials and Tribulations Behind Spirit Adrift\u2019s Final LP"},"content":{"rendered":"

FEATURES<\/a><\/p>\n

Nate Garrett on the Trials and Tribulations Behind Spirit Adrift\u2019s Final LP<\/p>\n

By <\/p>\n

J. Bennett<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00b7
\n April 10, 2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Photo by Alexia Ranae<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re gonna go out, might as well go out on top. Someone much wiser than us said that, but Spirit Adrift<\/a> vocalist, guitarist, and all-around mastermind Nate Garrett has taken it to heart. The Texas metal band\u2019s sixth and latest album, Infinite Illumination, sees Garrett and his bandmates\u2014bassist Sonny DeCarlo, drummer Mike Arellano, and guitarist Jason Dahlke\u2014at the top of their game, playing some of the most memorable songs Garrett has ever written. It will also be their last album.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever I finish writing a Spirit Adrift record, something awful happens,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery 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\u2019s going on with her, but there\u2019s a curse on this band. I\u2019m still going to be making music, just not Spirit Adrift. I know it sounds superstitious and weird, but I can\u2019t go through it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Below, Garrett shares some of the trials and tribulations behind Infinite Illumination.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What were your goals when you started writing this record?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Where do you think that mentality was coming from before everything started going bad?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, who\u2019s 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\u2019s in a general sense or really specific things like cancer or family stuff. He said something like, \u201cI almost feel like the Earth is passing through some kind of dark energy field because everyone you talk to is suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

I feel like it\u2019s important to force yourself to look at ways to be grateful, and I think now, especially, that\u2019s the only way to survive all the shit that\u2019s going on. But even before all this shit started happening to me personally, it\u2019s just been a vibe since Covid of like, \u201cIs shit going to get any better for anybody ever?\u201d<\/p>\n

What led you to break from sobriety?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s interesting, man. I\u2019m 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\u2019t want to die from [alcoholism], and I know countless people who have, but yeah, man: I thought about it, and I\u2019d been thinking about it for a long time. I got a bottle of scotch, and I won\u2019t lie\u2014it made me feel better.<\/p>\n

Now, I would never in a million years want to put anything out there that would suggest that that\u2019s a solution for somebody like me because it\u2019s a deadly thing that I have and that a lot of people have. I\u2019m not recommending this\u2014please put that in print. But the approach to this record was different than any record I\u2019ve done before because of that.<\/p>\n

How so?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I thought of the Ernest Hemingway thing. He said to write drunk and edit sober. Again, I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s a healthy approach, but that\u2019s what I did. When I was demoing the record, I was really going for it. I don\u2019t know if it was the chicken or the egg, but the idea of making a darker, more pissed off, more evil, more angry record\u2026I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a killer record. But you made great albums when you were sober, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thank you. It\u2019s my favorite record I\u2019ve ever made for sure. I\u2019ve listened to it sober, and I\u2019ve listened to it fucked up. I worked on it sober, and I worked on it fucked up. I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s good, but it is a first.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Besides the fact that it fits with your Morbid Angel alphabetical chronology, how did you decide on the title Infinite Illumination?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s 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 \u201cillumination\u201d for sure, and there\u2019s a UFC fighter, this Brazilian dude named Charles Oliveira, who would wear this gold chain that says \u201cIluminado.\u201d He would beat the fuck out of people in the ring and then scream into the camera, \u201cI\u2019m illuminated by God!\u201d That would always give me chills.<\/p>\n

How does that play out in the songs?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I had a vision of a main character who thinks he\u2019s illuminated by the universe. It doesn\u2019t matter if he\u2019s delusional or if he\u2019s actually right. I was thinking about prophets and cult leaders, and then there\u2019s that lyric on that Superjoint [Ritual] song [\u201cSymbol of Evermore\u201d] where he says, \u201cMy God beats the fuck out of your God,\u201d 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\u2019s got the answer and nobody else does.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got some guests on the album as well.<\/p>\n

A lot of people now are doing vocalist features, so I thought it\u2019d be cooler to do guitar player features. Steve [Jansson] from Crypt Sermon<\/a> plays on \u201cWhite Death,\u201d and Arthur Rizk from Eternal Champion<\/a> and Sumerlands<\/a> plays on the last song, \u201cWhere Once There Was an Ocean.\u201d And then James Murphy, from all my favorite bands [Testament<\/a>, Obituary<\/a>, Death<\/a>], he and I go back and forth on \u201cI Am Sustained,\u201d which was a dream come true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FEATURES Nate Garrett on the Trials and Tribulations Behind Spirit Adrift\u2019s Final LP By J. Bennett \u00b7 April…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":{"0":"post-387353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}