Mana Recording Studios, St Petersburg, Florida, May 6–9, 2010

For the past couple years it would be fair to say that we as a band have been slightly obsessed with these Cannibal Corpse in-the-studio
videos on youtube (link). One day hanging around John's house in the middle of a tour we were watching them and joking about
how great it would be to work with Erik Rutan (who played for years with Morbid Angel and now fronts Hate Eternal and whose
studio in Florida, Mana, is responsible for a wildly disproportionate amount of American death metal albums each year),
and on a whim JD fired off an email. Not more than half an hour later Erik had replied with what we'd quickly
learn is his characteristic enthusiasm, and a few short months later we were on our way to St Petersburg.

Things get interesting upon entering Florida. Dude in line at Hardee's is wearing a Bluetooth headset and spurs!

doesn't look like much from the outside, but...

JW is stoked that for once a studio is equipped to meet his drum specs

JD's request for a half-dozen half-stacks has also been met (finally!), as has my demand for a towering, gigantic-ass 8 x 10 cabinet

We also brought our tour manager, front of house guy, and sometime producer Brandon Eggleston just because, well, how could we not?
and also as a back-up engineer just in case Erik had never actually recorded an acoustic guitar or something. (A fear that proved,
ultimately, unfounded — turns out those Malevolent Creation records have acoustic guitar all over them! Who knew?)

it was, however, the first time Erik had recorded a band tracking songs with everyone playing all at once — live,
as it were, in the studio — something that apparently is just not done in metal circles (understandably, given
the insane complexity and density of the various players' parts — somewhat less of a concern with us)

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