Morbid Angel's 2011 album Illud Divinum Insanus was their first effort since 2003 and was a pretty far cry from their previous material. Some of the album was fairly straightforward death metal, though a lot of it went heavy on the industrial influences. The sudden change in sound really divided fans, and the overall reception of the record trended toward the negative.
Now in an interview with The Jasta Show, Illud Divinum Insanus producer and ex-Morbid Angel guitarist Erik Rutan said the record's out-of-the-blue sound was likely due to miscommunication. Rutan added that when he was originally recording the album, it was a lot more death metal than the end result, and that he believes the industrial stuff and additional elements came in way later.
"To me, communication is key, and I think with Trey and with the Illud record, I think there was a lot of probably miscommunications and stuff on what he wanted or what David wanted or maybe the engineer that mixed the record, what he thought. And sometimes things get lost in the translation.
"I don't know if you knew this, but I actually recorded five songs of drums on the record and engineered it. I didn't record the songs that were maybe deemed as — I don't know what the word would be — off the beaten path. I recorded 'Nevermore' and some of the death metal songs. I only recorded five.
"How that ended up happening was Gunter had contacted me about recording the drums. And if I'm not mistaken, I was, like, 'Dude, I only have X amount of time because Madball's coming in next week.' … So I remember when I heard the five songs that I recorded, the raw drums with the guitars, I was, like, 'Wow! This is fucking awesome.' And then they recorded the other six songs with Mark Prator, drums, and then they did the guitars and everything else somewhere else. But I only tracked five songs of drums. But when I heard the final record, I didn't even recognize 'em because there was all this extra stuff and the mix was a little bit different than I would envision. So I was, like, 'Oh, shit. I think I recorded drums on that song.'
"So that's a perfect example of lost in translation of Trey having a vision, maybe David having his own vision, just coming back into the fold, and then the engineer has his own vision. And I don't know because I'm not either of those guys but I assume that when I heard some of the raw stuff and what the final product was… Like I said, I only recorded five songs, but the raw drum tracks and the raw guitar on those five songs were killer. It was some of the other songs and maybe the mix of the songs and the added elements that threw it off to be, like, 'Wow! This is really different for Morbid Angel.'"
